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  3. A New website from the U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA)shows that 10 percent of the country is now a "food desert." The Food

A New website from the U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA)shows that 10 percent of the country is now a "food desert." The Food

admin2013-12-04  36
问题     A New website from the U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA)shows that 10 percent of the country is now a "food desert." The Food Desert Locator is an online map highlighting thousands of areas where, the USDA says, low-income families have little or no access to healthy fresh food. First identified in Scotland in the 1990s, food deserts have come to symbolize urban decay. They suggest images of endless fast-food restaurants and convenience stores serving fatty, sugary junk food to overweight customers who have never tasted a Brussels sprout.
    Accordingly, Michelle Obama announced a $400m Healthy Food Financing Initiative last year with the aim of eliminating food deserts nationwide by 2017. Official figures for the number of people living in food deserts already show a decline, from 23.5m in 2009 to 13.5m at the launch of the website. Although this might on the face of it suggest that the initiative is off to a superb start, sadly it does not in fact represent a single additional banana bought or soda escaped. This is because in America, the definition of a food desert is any census area where at least 20 percent of inhabitants are below the poverty line and 33 percent live more than a mile from a supermarket. By simply extending the cutoff in rural areas to ten miles, the USDA managed to rescue 10m people from desert life.
    Some academics would go further, calling the appearance of many food deserts nothing but a mirage. Research by the Centre for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington found that only 15 percent of people shopped for food within their own census area. Critics also note that focusing on supermarkets means that the USDA ignores tens of thousands of larger and smaller retailers, farmers’ markets and roadside greengrocers, many of which are excellent sources of fresh food. Together, they account for more than half of the country’s trillion-dollar retail food market.
    A visit to Renton, a depressed suburb of Seattle, demonstrates the problem. The town sits directly in the middle of a USDA food desert stretching miles in every direction. Yet it is home to a roadside stand serving organic fruit and vegetables, a health-food shop packed with nutritious grains and a superstore that researchers found attracts flocks of shoppers from well outside the desert.
Renton is mentioned in the passage to______.
选项 A、raise public awareness about food deserts
B、highlight the problems of food deserts
C、point out the solutions to food deserts
D、tell us to put food deserts in perspective
答案D
解析 最后一段提到了一个所谓的食物沙漠地区Renton。这个小镇位于食物沙漠的中心地带，但就在这个地方，路边的摊位却能够提供有机蔬菜和水果，店铺里能够提供有营养的谷物，大型的商铺还吸引了在这个食物沙漠之外的很多购物者。说明这里有着充足的健康食物来源，并不是真正意义上的食物沙漠。作者希望用这个例子告诉读者应该正确地看待食物沙漠的问题。
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