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  3. Once upon a time, you believed in the tooth fairy. You counted on the stability of housing prices and depended on bankers to be,

Once upon a time, you believed in the tooth fairy. You counted on the stability of housing prices and depended on bankers to be,

admin2010-11-29  40
问题     Once upon a time, you believed in the tooth fairy. You counted on the stability of housing prices and depended on bankers to be, well, dependable. And you figured that taking vitamins was good for you. Oh, it’s painful when another myth gets shattered. Recent research suggests that a daily multi is a waste of money for most people — and there’s growing evidence that some other old standbys may even hurt your health. Here’s what you need to know.
    Myth: A multivitamin can make up for a bad diet
    Last year, researchers published new findings from the Women’s Health Initiative, a long-term study of more than 160,000 midlife women. The data showed that multivitamin-takers are no healthier than those who don’t pop the pills, at least when it comes to the big diseases — cancer, heart disease, stroke. "Even women with poor diets weren’t helped by taking a multivitamin," says study author Marian Neuhouser, PhD, in the cancer prevention program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle.
    Vitamin supplements came into vogue in the early 1900s, when it was difficult or impossible for most people to get a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables year-round. Back then, vitamin-deficiency diseases weren’t unheard-of: the bowed legs and deformed ribs of rickets (caused by a severe shortage of vitamin D) or the skin problems and mental confusion of pellagra (caused by a lack of the B vitamin niacin). But these days, you’re extremely unlikely to be seriously deficient if you eat an average American diet.
    Myth: Vitamin C is a cold fighter
    In the 1970s, Nobel laureate Linus Pauling popularized the idea that vitamin C could prevent colds. Today, drugstores are full of vitamin C-based remedies. Studies say: Buyer, beware. In 2007, researchers analyzed a raft of studies going back several decades and involving more than 11,000 subjects to arrive at a disappointing conclusion: Vitamin C didn’t ward off colds.
    Of course, prevention isn’t the only game in town. Can the vitamin cut the length of colds? Yes and no. Taking the vitamin daily does seem to reduce the time you’ll spend sniffling — but not enough to notice. Adults typically have cold symptoms for 12 days a year; a daily pill could cut that to 11 days. Kids might go from 28 days of runny noses to 24 per year. The researchers conclude that minor reductions like these don’t justify the expense and bother of year-round pill-popping.
    Myth: Hey, it can’t hurt
    The old thinking went something like this — sure, vitamin pills might not help you, but they can’t hurt either. The shift started with a big study of beta-carotene pills. It was meant to test whether the antioxidant could prevent lung cancer, but researchers instead detected surprising increases in lung cancer and deaths among male smokers who took the supplement. No one knew what to make of the result at first, but further studies have shown it wasn’t a fluke — there’s a real possibility that in some circumstances, antioxidant pills could actually promote cancer.
    Vitamins are safe when you get them in food, but in pill form, they can act more like a drug, with the potential for unexpected and sometimes dangerous effects.
What’s the purpose of this passage?
选项 A、To tell a fairy tale about human teeth.
B、To inform readers of common misunderstanding about taking vitamins.
C、To criticize the society in general.
D、To urge readers to stop taking vitamins.
答案B
解析 主旨题。选项A只是重复了第一段提到的牙仙的传说故事，此后全篇对此再无赘述。选项B正确，从文中的小标题就可以进行判断，以“myth”为主线统领全文，旨在说明对维生素作用的一些常见误解。选项C不够具体。选项D与原文劝说读者不要盲目相信维生素的基本含义不符。
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