英语一
完型 ：2017年1月23日 《英国每日电讯报》The Telegraph
Hands off our roast potatoes
Even if families are less likely to sit down to eat together than was once the case, millions of Britons will none the less have partaken this weekend of one of the nation’s great traditions: the Sunday roast. On a cold winter’s day, few culinary pleasures can match it. Yet as we report now, the food police are determined that this enjoyment should be rendered yet another guilty pleasure guaranteed to damage our health.
The Food Standards Authority (FSA) has issued a public warning about the risks of a compound called acrylamide that forms in some foods cooked at high temperatures. This means that people should avoid crisping their roast potatoes, spurn thin-crust pizzas and only partially toast their bread. But where is the evidence to support such alarmist advice? While studies have shown that acrylamide can cause neurological damage in mice, there is no conclusive evidence that it causes cancer in humans.
Scientists say the compound is “likely to be carcinogenic” but have no hard scientific proof. On the basis of the precautionary principle, it could be argued that it is advisable to follow the FSA advice. After all, it was rumoured that smoking caused cancer for years before the evidence was found to prove a connection.
Doubtless a piece of boiled beef can always be served up on Sunday alongside some steamed vegetables, without the Yorkshire pudding and no wine. But would life be worth living? To be fair, the FSA says it is not telling people to cut out roast foods entirely, but to reduce their lifetime intake. However, their campaign risks coming across as exhortation and nannying. Constant health scares just end up with no one listening.
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The Guardian view on Yvette Cooper’s ‘town of culture’ proposal: a fine idea
A group of Labour MPs, among them Yvette Cooper, are bringing in the new year with a call to institute a UK “town of culture” award. The proposal is that it should sit alongside the existing city of culture title, which was held by Derry-Londonderry in 2013, by Hull in 2017, and has been awarded to Coventry for 2021. Cooper and her colleagues argue that the success of the crown for Hull, where it brought in £220m of investment and an avalanche of arts, ought not to be confined to cities. Britain’s towns, it is true, are not prevented from applying, but they generally lack the resources to put together a bid to beat their bigger competitors; only one, Paisley, has ever made the shortlist. A town of culture award could, it is argued, become an annual event, attracting funding and creating jobs. Some might see the proposal as a somewhat parochial step – a booby prize for the fact that Britain is no longer able to apply for the much more prestigious title of European capital of culture, a sought-after award bagged by Glasgow in 1990 and Liverpool in 2008, and to be held by the southern Italian city of Matera in 2019. (The news that Brexit would render the UK ineligible for the title came, rather bizarrely under the circumstances, as a surprise to many in 2017.) A cynic might speculate that the UK is on the verge of disappearing into an endlessly regressive frenzy of self-celebration in its desperation to reinvent itself for the post-Brexit world: after town of culture, who knows what will follow – village of culture? Suburb of culture? Hamlet of culture?
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