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- IELTS Reading Sentence Completion
- IELTS Reading Diagram Labelling
- IELTS Reading Multiple Choice Questions
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IELTS Reading PassageIn Praise or Fast Food
In Praise or Fast Food
The media and a multitude of cookbook writers would have us believe that modern, fast, processed food is a disaster and that it is a mark of sophistication to bemoan the steel roller mill and sliced white bread while yearning for stone-ground flour and a brick oven. Perhaps, we should call those who scorn industrialized food, culinary Luddites, after the 19th-century English workers who rebelled against the machines that destroyed their way of life. Instead of technology, what these Luddites abhor is commercial sauces and any synthetic aid to flavoring our food.
Culinary Luddism has come to signify more than just taste, however. It presents itself as a moral and political crusade, and it is here that I begin to back off. As a historian, I cannot accept the notion that the sunny, rural days of yesterday are in such contrast to the grey industrial present. I refute the philosophy that so crudely pits fresh and natural against processed and preserved, local against global, slow against fast, and additive-free against contaminated. History shows, I believe, that the Luddites have things back to front.
It will come as a shock to many to discover that the notion of food being fresh and natural is a rather modern one. For our ancestors, what was natural frequently tasted bad. Fresh meat was rank and tough, fresh fruit inedibly sour, and fresh vegetables bitter. Natural was unreliable. Fresh milk soured, eggs went rotten, and everywhere seasons of plenty were followed by seasons of hunger. What’s more, natural was usually indigestible. Grains, which supplied 50 to 90 percent of the calories in most societies, had to be threshed, ground, and cooked to be fit for consumption.
So to make food tasty, safe, digestible, and healthy, our forebears bred, ground, soaked, leached, curdled, fermented, and cooked naturally occurring plants and animals until they were nothing at all like their original form. They created sweet oranges and juicy apples and non-bitter legumes, happily abandoning their more natural but less tasty ancestors. They dried their meat and fruit, salted and smoked their fish, curdled and fermented their dairy products, and cheerfully used additives and preservatives like sugar, salt, oil, and vinegar to make the food edible.
Eating fresh, natural food was regarded with suspicion verging on horror; only the uncivilized, the poor, and the starving resorted to it. The ancient Greeks regarded the consumption of greens and root vegetables as a sign of bad times, and many succeeding civilizations believed the same. Happiness was not a verdant garden abounding in fresh fruits, but a securely locked storehouse jammed with preserved, processed foods.
What about the idea that the best food is handmade in the country? That food comes from the country goes without saying. However, the idea that country people eat better than city dwellers is preposterous. Very few of our ancestors working the land were independent peasants baking their bread and salting down their pigs. Most were burdened with heavy taxes and rent, often paid directly by the food they produced. Many were ultimately serfs or slaves, who subsisted on what was leftover watery soup and gritty flatbread.
The dishes we call ethnic and assume to be of peasant origin were invented for the urban, or at least urbane, aristocrats who collected the surplus. This is as true of the lasagna of northern Italy as it is of the chicken korma of Mughal Delhi, the moo shu pork of imperial China, and the pilafs
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Questions 27-29
Label the diagrams below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Reading Passage 3 for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 27-29 on your answer sheet.
27 ………………………………….. = mass, produced bread.
28 ………………………………….. = traditionally produced bread
29 ………………………………….. enhanced by synthetic products
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Questions 30-34
Complete the sentences.
Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 30-34 on your answer sheet.
30The writer does not believe that a ……………………. philosophy of food production is superior to an industrialized philosophy of food production.
31In the past, the majority of fresh, natural food ……………………. and could not be relied on.
32Most people’s intake consisted largely of.. ………………….., which required a great deal of preparation.
33The ……………………. of food was unrecognizable once it had gone through the various processes of making it edible.
34For the ancient Greeks, a ……………………. full of food was preferable to a garden full of fruit.
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Questions 35-40
Choose the correct letter A, B, C, or D.
Write your answers in boxes 35-40 on your answer sheet.
35What does the writer say about peasants?
- They had a better diet than most people living in cities.
- They were largely self-sufficient.
- Much of what they produced went to a landowner.
- They created imaginative soup and flatbread dishes.
36Lasagna is an example of a dish
- Invented by peasants.
- Created for wealthy city-dwellers.
- That was only truly popular in northern Italy.
- That tastes like dishes from several other countries.
37Which of the following is NOT an important factor mentioned in the eighth and ninth paragraphs?
- The development of take-away food as an option
- The arduous nature of food preparation before mass-production
- The global benefits of industrialized food production
- The range of advantages that industrialized food production had
38What is the important point the writer wishes to make in the tenth paragraph?
- There are disadvantages to modem food production as well as advantages.
- People need to have a balanced diet.
- People everywhere now have a huge range of food to choose from.
- Demand for food that is traditionally produced exploits the people that produce it.
39The writer mentions chocolate, pasta, and canned tomatoes in the same paragraph because
- The industrialized version has advantages over the natural version.
- They are all products associated with a sophisticated lifestyle.
- They are all products that have suffered from over-commercialization.
- They are the most popular examples of industrial foods.
40What is the overall point that the writer makes in the reading passage?
- People should learn the history of the food they consume.
- Modem industrial food is generally superior to raw and natural food.
- Criticism of industrial food production is largely misplaced.
- People should be more grateful for the range of foods they can now choose from.
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Answer
27Answer: steel roller mill
28Answer: brick oven
29Answer: flavoring
30Answer: rural
31Answer: tasted bad
32Answer: grains
33Answer: original form
34Answer: storehouse
35Answer: C
36Answer: B
37Answer: A
38Answer: D
39Answer: A
40Answer: C
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