We are What We Eat

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Drinking habits vary. Some people don’t drink alcohol at all, just (a) ______ like fruit juice. They are called (b) ______. Others like to (c) ______a glass of wine slowly, just to be (d) ______. Others like to drink glass after glass of beer, or possibly (e) ______ such as whisky, brandy or vodka. Soon they become (f) ____ and if they continue, they’ll get (g) ______ and wake up the next morning with a bad (h) ______. Some people are dependent on alcohol. They can’t do without it. They are (i) _____. One thing is certain. If you drive, you shouldn’t drink. Stay (j)____.

As a food label is often nothing more than an advert to tempt you to buy the product, you should pay particular attention to the choice of words used. Always watch out for the word ‘flavour’, as this may mean that the product contains synthetic (= made from artificial substances ), ingredients. Chocolate-flavoured topping, for example, will not contain chocolate – so read carefully. Many manufacturers also use a range of meaningless descriptions. Feel-good words, such as ‘wholesome’ (= good for you, physically or morally ) ‘farmhouse’, ‘original’ and ‘traditional’ do not mean anything. Other words such as ‘farm fresh’ and ‘country fresh’ also intentionally blur the true nature of a product’s source. ‘Fresh egg pasta’, for example, means that the pasta was indeed made with real and not powdered eggs, but maybe months ago. Words that you can trust are ‘organic’, ‘wholemeal’ (= containing all the natural substances in the grain with nothing removed ), ‘natural mineral water’, ‘fair trade’(= refers to products such as coffee, tea or chocolate marketed in such a way that the small farmers in developing countries who produce them get the profits rather than large multinational companies ), ‘free-range’(= relating to farm animals that are not kept in cages ) and the ‘V’- vegetarian symbol.

Consumer pressure over GM (= genetically modified, i.e. the genes (DNA) of a natural product have been altered in some way ) foods has led to better labeling, but loopholes (= ways of getting round regulations usually because they have not been written in a precise enough way ) still exist. GM product derivatives (= things produced from ), such as starches, sugars, fats and oils where no genetically modified protein or DNA material still remains, still go unlabelled in many products such as cereal bars, fish fingers, jellies, and vegetable burgers.

Take particular care over low-fat and low-sugar products. Guidelines state that ‘low-fat’ foods must not have more than 5 per cent fat, while ‘reduced fat’ means that the total fat content is 25 per cent less than the standard versions of the same product. The terms ‘light’ or ‘lite’ are meaningless since they could refer to texture, fat content, sugar content or even colour.

1.9. a) Read the passage containing some food idioms and try to retell the text using non-idiomatic English. Is it easy? Are there any idioms for similar situations in Russian? b) Answer the questions that follow the text.

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