Make sure you know the vocabulary. Explain it in English and expand on its reference to the article given below

Render the text.

Listening II

Imagine you are a doctor. Give advice to a diabetic bearing in mind the information from the text.

Name 6 foods diabetics should eat. Name 6 foods they should avoid.

3) Listen again and take notes to expand on the following:

Diabetes is the result of inadequate insulin being produced.

There is no reason why diabetics should not enjoy a normal life.

The British Diabetic Association (BDA) is at the public’s disposal.

Weight control and regular exercise play an important role in a diabetic’s life.

Diabetics should be careful with foods which contain a lot of sugar.

Some foods help to keep blood sugar down.

High-fat foods should be avoided.

1) Listen to the text “Eat Greek and Live Longer”. Answer the following T/F statements.

a). Cretans are healthy and live longer.

b). There is a low level of fat in the Greek diet.

c). Wine should be drunk in moderate amounts.

d). Experts are certain that olive oil is the secret to a long healthy life.

2) Listen again and take notes to talk about which of the foods and habits mentioned are good for you/ bad for you.

sue, of a frisson through, to feel entitled, a crippling handicap, dorm cafeterias, culinary solace, submarine sandwiches, impecunious student, counterculture, a fad, pot-addled hippies, crunching on leaves, fringe figure, dubiously utopian ideas, rarefied precincts, confined to, fowl, posh, hors d’oeuvres, a sellout, sprouting, to spot, allure, foot-and-mouth, PETA, degenerative diseases, isoflavones, aficionados, veggies, steamed, beef-flavored fries.

Eat your Broccoli!

The news that McDonald’s is being sued by Hindus and vegetarians for glazing their French fires with beef extract sent something of a frisson through me. Not merely because I am a vegetarian myself, but because we have come to the stage when people in America now feel entitled to expect McDonald’s, the cathedral of the beefburger, to serve them something that is 100 percent vegetarian.

What an evolution! When I came to the United States as a graduate student in 1975, to be vegetarian was a crippling handicap. The only food I could eat at the dorm cafeterias (other than breakfast) was salads. There were the occasional tasteless boiled vegetables, meant to accompany the main dish, but to one accustomed to the flavours and seasoning of richly varied Indian cuisine, these were barely edible. (I mean, how much salt and pepper can you sprinkle on a boiled potato to make in into dinner?) When I fled the campus to seek culinary solace in the wider world, all I could find were pizzas and submarine sandwiches. Greater Boston boasted but one Indian restaurant, and as an impecunious student I couldn’t afford to go more than once a semester. At the rare dinner parties I was invited to, the hostesses heaped carrots and peas on my plate – and, if I was lucky, mashed potatoes.

If that wasn’t bad enough. I discovered that most Americans associated vegetarianism with the counterculture, a fad for pot-addled hippies in beads and sandals chanting “om” between crunching on those leaves they weren’t smoking. Merely confessing I was vegetarian meant being seen, at best, as some earnest, otherworldly fringe figure, probably full of dubiously utopian ideas about world peace and the environment. No one believed I didn’t even like animals. I just did not want to chew on their corpses.

I said that once to an American friend and his eyes popped. Lowering the burger he had been raising to his mouth, he said in a hollow voice, “I never thought of it that way.” He couldn’t finish his lunch that day, and couldn’t face meat for a week. He got over it, to his wife’s relief. But thereafter, when asked why I was vegetarian, I did not mention corpses. “Oh,” I always replied, “I just don’t want to bite into anything which in its natural living state might have bitten me back”.

How things have changed. A way of life once confined to a few rarefied precincts of L.A has gone mainstream. According to the Vegetarian Times, 7% of Americans consider themselves vegetarian – about 18 million people. A 1999 poll by the Vegetarian Resource Group found that 57% of the population “sometimes, often or always orders a vegetarian item when eating out.’ And since trends are made by the young, it’s striking that 6 percent of 18-to 29-year-olds never eat fish, fowl or meat.

It’s become chic to shun meat. I recently attended to a cocktail reception at a posh New York hotel where all the hors d’oeuvres were vegetarian, in honor of the chief guest, singer Paul McCartney. A celebrity-studded “Say No to Veal” dinner at New York’s Plaza Hotel was a sellout on May 20. Organic vegetarian restaurants are, er, sprouting on both coasts. Supermarket shelves are stacked with cans of soup and beans labeled Vegetarian. More and more natural-foods companies are being established, and many are being taken over by major corporations, always quick to spot a future business opportunity. It doesn’t hurt that red meat is losing much of its allure these days, what with mad cow, foot-and –mouth and all the rest. The animal-rights group PETA claims 19,000 Americans are switching to a meat-free diet every week.

It also doesn’t hurt, of course, that Americans have become more health conscious than ever. The American Dietetic Association reports that vegetarians “have lower morbidity and mortality rates from several chronic degenerative diseases than do nonvegetarians.” Soybeans not only give you protein, they’re important sources of isoflavones that may help prevent some cancers. Vegetables have always been thought of as being good for you, but what has changed is that they have also become pleasurable to eat. Immigration in recent years has brought to America a wealth of new cuisines, whose aficionados know what to do with veggies. Menus now offer vegetarian options that don’t involve a single steamed Brussels sprouts – something only nonvegetarians can imagine a vegetarian wanting to eat.

One hundred and fifty years ago, that American original, Henry David Thoreau, had no doubt that “the human race, in its gradual improvement,” would stop eating meat. McDonald’s has apologized to vegetarians offended by its beef-flavoured fries. Maybe the day is not too far off when it will be offering McSoyburgers, even in Peoria. Hold the fries, anyway.

by Shashi Tharoor, Newsweek, June 25, 2001

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