【阅读练习】
What is it about Americans and food? We love to eat, but we feel 1 about it afterward. We say we want only the best, but we strangely enjoy junk food. We’re 2 with health and weight loss but face an unprecedented epidemic of obesity(肥胖). Perhaps the 3 to this ambivalence(矛盾情结) lies in our history. The first Europeans came to this continent searching for new spices but went in vain. The first cash crop(经济作物) wasn’t eaten but smoked. Then there was Prohibition, intended to prohibit drinking but actually encouraging more 4 ways of doing it.
The immigrant experience, too, has been one of inharmony. Do as Romans do means eating what “real Americans” eat, but our nation’s food has come to be 5 by imports—pizza, say, or hot dogs. And some of the country’s most treasured cooking comes from people who arrived here in shackles.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise then that food has been a medium for the nation’s defining struggles, whether at the Boston Tea Party or the sitins at southern lunch counters. It is integral to our concepts of health and even morality whether one refrains from alcohol for religious reasons or evades meat for political.
But strong opinions have not brought 7 . Americans are ambivalent about what they put in their mouths. We have become 8 of our foods, especially as we learn more about what they contain.
The 9 in food is still prosperous in the American consciousness. It’s no coincidence, then, that the first Thanksgiving holds the American imagination in such bondage(束缚). It’s what we eat—and how we 10 it with friends, family, and strangers—that help define America as a community today.
A. answer I. creative
B. result J. belief
C. share K. suspicious
D. guilty L. certainty
E. constant M. obsessed
F. defined N. identify
G. vanish O. ideals
H. adapted
【答案及详解】
1. D feel是一个系动词，可以判断此处应填入一个形容词，通过上下文意思，以及后面介词about, 可以确定选项为D项guilty, 短语feel guilty about sth. “对……感到有愧”。全句的意思为“我们很爱吃，但是往往在吃完之后又有负罪感”。
2.M be obsessed with 为固定搭配，原意为“被……附上/缠住/迷住心窍”，放在本句表示“十分重视”。全句的意思为“我们很关心健康和减肥，但肥胖却又空前地在蔓延”。
3. A 本句缺一个名词作主语，并且根据和介词to的搭配，可以推断出正确选项answer.
4. I本句根据more和ways可以判断出需要填入一个形容词构成比较级，根据上下文，表示“旨在禁止酗酒的禁酒令，却激发了更多新奇的方法来酗酒”，可以确定I为正确选项。
5. F 本题较难。根据be 和by 确定应填入一个过去分词。再根据上下文，上文表示“应该吃典型的美国人吃的食物”，下文通过 but 转折，表示实际上“美国的食物已经被诸如比萨和热狗这样的舶来品所诠释了”，因此可以确定F为正确选项。
6.B政治结果，可根据宗教原因religious reasons来推断此处填政治结果。
7. L由于横线后面没有宾语，可以确定不是形成bring的短语，这样本句所缺的为一名词，做bring的宾语。根据下文解释，“美国人对他们所吃的食物的态度是矛盾的”，可以推出本句意义为“坚定的观点也不是确定不变的”。因此可以确定L为正确选项。
8. K系动词become后应填入一个形容词，和后面介词of形成短语be/become suspicious of “对……感到怀疑”。
9. J本句缺一个名词作主语，并且根据和介词in的搭配，可以推断出正确选项belief，(have)belief in sth.“ 相信……”。
10. C本句是一般现在时，缺一个动词，且和with 搭配，确定选项为share, share sth. with sb., “与某人分享某事”。