WASHINGTON---Think you're savvy about food safety? That you wash your hands well, scrub away germs, cook your meat properly? Guess again. Scientists put cameras in the kitchens of 100 families in Logan, Utah. What was caught on tape in this middle-class, well-educated college town suggests why food poisoning hits so many Americans. People skipped soap when hand-washing. Used the same towel to wipe up raw meat juice as to dry their hands. Made a salad without washing the lettuce. Undercooked the meat loaf. One even tasted the marinade in which bacteria-ridden raw fish had soaked. Not to mention the mom who handled raw chicken and then fixed her infant a bottle without washing her hands. Or another mom who merely rinsed her baby's juice bottle after it fell into raw eggs---no soap against the salmonella that can lurk in eggs. "Shocking," was Utah State University nutritionist Janet Anderson's reaction. Specialists call this typical of the average U.S. household: Everybody commits at least some safety sins when they are hurried, distracted by fussy children or ringing phones, simply not thinking about germs. Even Anderson made changes in her kitchen after watching the tapes. The Food and Drug Administration funded Anderson's $50,000 study to detect how cooks slip up. The goal is to improve consumers' knowledge of how to protect themselves from the food poisoning that strikes 76 million Americans each year. "One of the great barriers in getting people to change is they think they're doing such a good job already," said FDA consumer research chief Alan Levy. Surveys show most Americans blame restaurants for food-borne illnesses. Asked if they follow basic bacteria-fighting tips---listed on the Internet at www.fightbac.org---most insist they're careful in their kitchens. Levy says most food poisonings probably occur at home. The videotapes suggest why. People have no idea that they're messing up, Anderson said. "You just go in the kitchen, and it's something you don't think about." She described preliminary ... What is the main purpose of this article? A) To discourage people from cooking so much meat at home. B) To criticize the families who participated in the study. C) To introduce the Food and Drug Administration's food safety campaigns. D) To report the results of a study about the causes of food poisoning.
D
Americans plan parties for many reasons. As in other cultures, many Americans attend parties for weddings and religious or national holidays. But some parties are especially American. For example, a group of neighbors may gather on their street to eat food, play music and visit with one another. This is called a block party. A woman might invite a group of women to a party called a baby shower for a friend who is about to give birth. Guests bring presents for the new baby. Americans also attend tailgate parties. A tailgate is the back end of a truck or other vehicle that opens down. The tailgate parties are a big part of sports culture in the United States. Friends bring food and drink to a sports event. They eat together in the parking area of the sports stadium. Birthday parties are also very popular. Many parents organize a party for their child around a theme. Birthday parties usually include gifts and a birthday cake with candles. In many parts of the United States, cupcakes have become a popular replacement for cakes. Birthday parties can be low cost or very costly. Some parents take their children's birthday parties very seriously, even when the child is too young to fully understand the celebration. One group of parents started a website called Birthdays Without Pressure. They decided that some parents were under too much social pressure to plan costly parties for their children. The group sees this movement as an example of America's culture of "too much stuff". The group's website gives suggestions on how to keep birthday celebrations simple, meaningful and fun without spending a lot of money. Their advice may be very helpful during this period of economic recession . How many kinds of parties does the passage mention? A) 5. B) 6. C) 7. D) 8.
C
Q: "The Lord of the Rings", one of the best sellers in the new millennium , was made up of three parts--"The Fellow Ship of the Ring", "Two Towers", and "The Return of the King". Millions upon millions of people have read it in over 25 different languages, but fewer know about the author and the history of the composition of the creative masterwork. John Ronald Refuel Tolkien was born in South Africa in 1892. His parents died when he was a child. Living in England with his aunt, Tolkien and his cousins made up play languages, a hobby that led to Tolkien's becoming skilled in Welsh, Greek, Gothic, Old Norse and Anglo--Saxon. After graduating from Oxford, Tolkien served in World War I. In 1917, while recovering from trench fever he began composing the mythology for The Rings. As a professor of Anglo-Saxon in the 1930s at Oxford, Tolkien was part of an informal discussion group called the Inklings, which included several writers. The group was soon 1istening to chapters of Tolkien's imaginative work "The Hobbit". Hobbit was a name Tolkien created for people that could best be described as half-sized members of the English rural class. Hobbits live in hillside holes. One of them,Bilbo Baggins, looks for treasures with a group of dwarves . On the way, he meets the twisted, pitiful creature Gollum, from whom he sees a golden ring that makes the holder invisible. One of Tolkien's students persuaded her employer, publisher Allen & Unwind, to look at a draft . The chairman of the firm, Stanley Unwind, thought that the best judge for a Children's book would be his ten-year-old son. The boy earned a shilling for reporting back that the adventure was exciting, and "The Hobbit" was published in 1937. It sold so well that Unwind asked for a continuation. Over a dozen years later, in 1954, Tolkien produced "The Lord of the Rings", a series of books so creative that they hold readers both new and old -- after their publication. What can we learn from the text? A) "The Lord of the Rings" didn't sell well in the last millennium. B) People know better about Tolkien himself than about his works. C) Tolkien was quite familiar with Old English. D) Tolkien knew very well about different kinds of local languages in Africa.
A: C