The spread of Western eating habits around the world is bad for human health and the environment. These findings come from a new report in the journal Nature.
David Tillman, a professor of ecology at the University of Minnesota, America, examined information from 100 countries to identify what people ate and how diet affected health. He noted a movement beginning in the 1960s. He found that as nations industrialized, population increased and earnings rose, more people began to adopt(采纳) what has been called the Western diet.
The Western diet is high in sugar, fat, oil and meat. By eating these foods, people began to get fatter and sicker. David Tillman says overweight people are at greater risk for non-infectious diseases like diabetes(糖尿病)and heart disease.
Unfortunately when people become industrialized, if they adopt this Western diet, they are going to have these health problems, especially in developing countries in Asia. China is an example where the number of diabetes cases has been jumping from less than one percent to 10 percent of the population as they began to industrialize over a 20-year period. And that is happening all across the world, in Mexico, in Nigeria and so on.
And, a diet bad for human beings, is also bad for the environment. As the world's population grows, more forests and tropical(热带的)areas will become farmland for crops or grasslands for cattle. We are likely to have more greenhouse gas in the future from agriculture than that coming out of all forms of transportation right now.
Mr. Tillman calls the link between diet, the environment and human health, "a trilemma": a problem offering a difficult choice. He says one possible settlement is leaving the Western diet behind.
According to the passage, more greenhouse gas might be given off in the future from ____________.
A.transportation | B.developing countries |
C.agriculture | D.developed countries |
David Tilman believes that__________.
A.diet, the environment and human health are closely connected |
B.the Western diet is the only choice as the nation industrializes |
C.people in tropical areas are more likely to have heart disease |
D.traditional diets are more balanced than the Western diet |
We can infer from the passage that ___________.
A.Nigeria has the largest number of diabetes cases |
B.overweight people are at higher risk of infectious diseases |
C.the examined information comes from developing countries |
D.industrialization contributes to the spread of the Western diet |
The main purpose of the passage is to___________.
A.call on us to protect the environment |
B.warn us of the danger of the Western diet |
C.remind us of the importance of health |
D.advise us to have a balanced diet |