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(矛盾情結) lies in our history. The first Europeans came to this continent searching for new spices but went in vain. The first cash crop(經(jīng)濟作物) 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 6
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(束縛). 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
【答案及詳解】
1. D feel是一個系動詞，可以判斷此處應填入一個形容詞，通過上下文意思，以及后面介詞about, 可以確定選項為D項guilty, 短語feel guilty about sth. “對……感到有愧”。全句的意思為“我們很愛吃，但是往往在吃完之后又有負罪感”。
2.M be obsessed with 為固定搭配，原意為“被……附上/纏住/迷住心竅”，放在本句表示“十分重視”。全句的意思為“我們很關心健康和減肥，但肥胖卻又空前地在蔓延”。
3. A 本句缺一個名詞作主語，并且根據(jù)和介詞to的搭配，可以推斷出正確選項answer.
4. I本句根據(jù)more和ways可以判斷出需要填入一個形容詞構成比較級，根據(jù)上下文，表示“旨在禁止酗酒的禁酒令，卻激發(fā)了更多新奇的方法來酗酒”，可以確定I為正確選項。
5. F 本題較難。根據(jù)be 和by 確定應填入一個過去分詞。再根據(jù)上下文，上文表示“應該吃典型的美國人吃的食物”，下文通過 but 轉折，表示實際上“美國的食物已經(jīng)被諸如比薩和熱狗這樣的舶來品所詮釋了”，因此可以確定F為正確選項。
6.B政治結果，可根據(jù)宗教原因religious reasons來推斷此處填政治結果。
7. L由于橫線后面沒有賓語，可以確定不是形成bring的短語，這樣本句所缺的為一名詞，做bring的賓語。根據(jù)下文解釋，“美國人對他們所吃的食物的態(tài)度是矛盾的”，可以推出本句意義為“堅定的觀點也不是確定不變的”。因此可以確定L為正確選項。
8. K系動詞become后應填入一個形容詞，和后面介詞of形成短語be/become suspicious of “對……感到懷疑”。
9. J本句缺一個名詞作主語，并且根據(jù)和介詞in的搭配，可以推斷出正確選項belief，(have)belief in sth.“ 相信……”。
10. C本句是一般現(xiàn)在時，缺一個動詞，且和with 搭配，確定選項為share, share sth. with sb., “與某人分享某事”。
