發(fā)布時間： 2017年05月23日

四級六級閱讀練習（56）：我們該不該吃早餐？

小編寄語：熟悉四六級閱讀理解題型的同學應該都了解，英語四六級考試閱讀理解材料大多選自《時代》《衛(wèi)報》《今日美國》等外刊。要想閱讀理解這部分拿到高分，必須在平常多閱讀，掌握新詞匯，鍛煉閱讀速度。但對于很多同學來說，如何每日在浩瀚的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)世界尋找合適的閱讀材料進行分析解讀是一項很耗時間的事情。為此，　英語每日精選《衛(wèi)報》《時代》等外刊上的文章供大家進行閱讀練習。

【今日閱讀推薦】本篇閱讀材料“我們該不該吃早餐？”選自《衛(wèi)報》（原文標題：Should I eat breakfast? 2012.10.28）。如果大家覺得比較簡單，就當作泛讀材料了解了解，認識幾個新單詞或新表達方式也不錯。如果大家覺得這些材料理解上有難度，不妨當做挑戰(zhàn)自己的拔高訓練，希望大家都有進步^^

Studies have shown that a good breakfast could hold the key to healthiness.

Up to two-thirds of us skip the first meal of the day but nutritionists say we should breakfast like kings and eat less later. There is some research that links eating a good breakfast with a reduction in the risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. While it's tempting to miss breakfast when you're on a diet, it's not clear that this helps you to lose weight.

Last week a research team from Imperial College London presented its findings at the Neuroscience 2012 conference. The researchers scanned the brains of 21 healthy people as they showed them a variety of foods including chocolate, pizza and salad. They compared how attractive the foods were to people, as well as how much they ate for lunch after the scan on two days, one on which breakfast was missed and one on which they ate a large breakfast (750 calories). The researchers found that missing breakfast increased the appeal of high-calorie foods (as measured by increased orbital frontal cortex activity on the brain scan) and that people ate about 250 calories more at lunch. The researchers said this shows breakfast takes the edge off our appetite so we don't crave high-calorie foods. So, how should we be starting our days?

The solution

Studies have come up with a variety of suitable breakfast foods. There is some evidence in favour of the full English version (on the basis that eating fats primes the metabolism to be more efficient for the rest of the day). However, that study was done on mice and is not convincing – although the mice who ate a good breakfast were less likely to get chubby.

Chocolate cake is recommended by researchers from Tel Aviv University who found that a 600-calorie breakfast with proteins and carbohydrates, including a sweet treat, controlled cravings for sweet things for the rest of the day and kickstarted the body's metabolism. Their study looked at 193 obese people over 32 weeks and found those who ate sweet things at breakfast lost an average of 40lb more than those who didn't.

A study in the US journal Pediatrics of more than 2,000 teenagers found that a quarter missed breakfast but that those who ate it were on average five pounds lighter (and ironically less likely to have been dieting) than those who didn't.

However, it is always hard to prove cause and effect in dieting studies. People who eat breakfast often turn out to take more exercise and drink less alcohol so there may be other reasons for their weight loss.

A review of the research that added up results of nine studies on the relationship between eating breakfast cereals and weight, found that children and adults who regularly ate breakfast cereals (the study was funded by Kellogg's) were less likely to be overweight than those who did not eat them. The authors say this doesn't provide proof that cereals help you stay slim and that there was no evidence that their cereal eaters ate less throughout the day.

So, although eating breakfast is linked with being slimmer, this may simply be an association. There is, however, another more robust body of evidence that suggests children benefit from eating breakfast because it helps them to concentrate.

【重點單詞及短語】

hold the key to 掌握

frontal cortex 額葉皮層（大腦的一部分）

take the edge off 減弱（胃口）等；使變?nèi)?

crave v. 渴求；渴望

prime v. 使準備好；做準備

metabolism n. 新陳代謝

Question time:

1. What are the findings of researchers from Imperial College London?

2. Can you list the benefits of having breakfast according to the passage?

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