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Vocabulary Exercises: Exercise 4 - Choosing the meaning of words in context |
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Instructions: Read each passage and click on the correct choice. Scroll down if you
do not see the Answer box. If wrong, try again.
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This passage was adapted from Hold the Pickles, Hold the Lettuce
by Michiko Kakutani. "The New York Times," January 30, 2001.
Eric Schlosser's compelling new book, "Fast Food Nation,"
provides the reader with a vivid sense of how the fast food industry has permeated
contemporary life, affecting everything from ranching and farming to diets and health, from
marketing and labor practices to larger economic trends. He gives a fascinating and sometimes
grisly account of the process whereby cattle and potatoes are
transformed into the burgers and fries served up by local fast food franchises. It's an account
that includes an unnerving description of the dangerous, injury-filled
work performed in slaughterhouses, where job assignments have names like "first legger,
knuckle dropper, navel boner," and an equally absorbing description of how the New Jersey-based
"flavor industry" tries to make processed frozen food palatable
by manipulating taste, aroma and "mouthfeel."
Mr. Schlosser argues that as "the basic thinking behind
fast food has become the operating system of today's retail economy," small businesses
have been marginalized; the competition from fast food chains
has had a negative impact on them. As regional differences are being smoothed over, a deadening
homogenization has been injected throughout our nation and
increasingly around the world.
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