Eating ultra-processed (超加工的) foods for more than 20％ of your daily calorie intake every day can set you on the road to cognitive (认知的) decline, according to a new study. Previous studies have found they can raise the risk of having obesity, heart and circulation problems, diabetes and cancer. They may even shorten our lives. Now, the new study has revealed eating more ultra-processed foods may contribute to overall cognitive decline, including the areas of the brain involved in executive (决策的) functioning — the ability to process information and make decisions.
In fact, men and women who ate the most ultra-processed foods had a 28% faster rate of global cognitive decline and a 25% faster rate of executive function decline compared with people who ate the least amount of overly processed food, the new study found. “While in need of further study and replication, the new results are quite convincing and emphasize the critical role for proper nutrition in preserving and promoting brain health and reducing risk for brain diseases as we get older,” said Tanzi, a Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He was not involved in the study.
The study, presented on August 1 at the 2022 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in San Diego, followed over 10,000 Brazilians whose average age was 51 for up to 10 years. Just over half of the study participants were women.
Cognitive testing, which included immediate and delayed word recall, word recognition and verbal fluency were performed at the beginning and end of the study, and the participants were inquired about their diet. “In Brazil, ultra-processed foods make up 25% to 30% of the total calorie intake. We eat a lot of hamburgers, chocolate and white bread. It’s not very different, unfortunately, from many other western countries,” said co-author Dr. Claudia Suemoto, an assistant professor.
Ultra-processed foods are defined as “industrial formulations of food substances (oils, fats, sugars, starch, and protein isolates) that contain little or no whole foods and typically include flavorings, colorings and other chemical additives”, according to the study.
1. What is Tanzi’s attitude towards the new study?| A．Objective. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Ambiguous. | D．Disapproving. |
| A．Its participants were over 50 years old. |
| B．It followed the participants for a period of time. |
| C．It proved men had a faster rate of cognitive decline than women. |
| D．It first found ultra-processed foods could raise the risk of obesity. |
| A．Eat their favorite foods. |
| B．Introduce their daily routine. |
| C．Enhance their verbal fluency. |
| D．Take a series of cognitive tests. |
| A．The substances of ultra-processed foods |
| B．The appropriate intake of ultra-processed foods |
| C．Cognitive decline linked to ultra-processed foods |
| D．Ultra-processed foods causing executive functioning loss |
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【推荐1】Probably you grew up with a stop-snacking mom. That is a mom who tells her kids that snacks (零食) are bad. They will make you fat. They will hurt your teeth.
Well, Mom may be right about most things, but she isn’t right about all snacks. There is actually a healthy way to snack.
The first rule about snacking is to make your own. Don’t buy snacks that are already wrapped and sold in stores.
The second rule about snacking is to eat things that take longer for your body to process. Things like bread and crackers (饼干) are processed quickly by your body.
With one or two snack breaks during your day, you will probably find that you eat less at lunch and dinner.
| A．The third rule about snacking is to remember water |
| B．Have some cheese or yogurt to go along with some bread |
| C．The most important rule is avoid snacks when hungry |
| D．In fact, snacking the right way can keep you healthier |
| E．Try fresh or dried fruit which makes ideal snacks |
| F．Most of those snacks have too much sugar and salt in them |
| G．Smaller meals will help you cut down the amount of food you eat during your day |
【推荐2】While there are many milk substitutes (替代品) on the market, most fall short of imitating dairy milk. And while vegetarians around the world have grown accustomed to these substitutes, millions of milk drinkers are unsatisfied with these options, which don’t often taste, look, and blend like dairy milk. That accuracy is exactly what Impossible Foods has set out to develop. “We want milk that a dairy milk consumer will choose” said CEO Pat Brown at a virtual conference call.
Like the famous Impossible Burger which tastes, cooks, and bleeds like real meat, Impossible Milk will also most likely be soy-based, giving it a protein profile (外形) like dairy milk. While the product is still in development for at least another year, Brown said in the conference call that soy is a very good choice from a nutritional standpoint and a supply chain standpoint, and for those reasons he thinks there’s a great chance that it will be the base protein for their product.
Plant-based milk, meats, and other products have been rising over the past several years as environmental and health concerns have grown, especially among millennials (千禧一代). According to a study by YouGov, approximately 55 percent of millennials surveyed agree with the statement “I am open to substituting meat or dairy products with healthy substitutes”.
And the market is seeing this preference take shape. According to the Dairy Farmers of America, milk sales dropped by $1.1 billion between 2017 and 2018. While at the same time, the Plant-Based Food Association revealed that the sales of plant-based milk increased a lot, making up 15 percent of the total milk market.
As the trend towards choosing plant-based substitutes grows, so do the products, which can now be found in supermarkets throughout the world. With no plans of slowing down, plant-based food substitutes are a micro revolution that is changing the very culture of our food consumption from the bottom all the way to the top.
1. What is the target of Impossible Foods?| A．To satisfy the increasing demand for milk. | B．To attract more vegetarians to buy milk. |
| C．To make its milk more similar to dairy milk. | D．To develop more nutritional milk substitutes. |
| A．Intolerant. | B．Unclear. | C．Impartial. | D．Favorable. |
| A．The poor sales of milk substitutes. | B．The success of Impossible Foods’s milk. |
| C．The booming market for plant-based milk. | D．The competition among plant-based products. |
| A．They will change vegetarians’ diets. | B．They are only sold in supermarkets. |
| C．They are expensive for most consumers. | D．They have a strong effect on food culture. |
【推荐3】To start their day, most American kids-82.4 percent of those aged 2 to 19-eat breakfast, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The likelihood of eating breakfast seems to decline as kids get older, dropping from about 96 percent of 2 to 5-year-olds to 73 percent of children aged 12 to 19. The report notes that breakfast consumption is about 10 percent less among children from lower-income families than among those whose families have a higher income.
As is mentioned above, for most youngsters, breakfast is part of their daily routine.
| A．Milk is the most common food or drink on their menu. |
| B．Not having breakfast can lead to low learning efficiency. |
| C．It also varies from country to country, according to the report. |
| D．The benefits of regularly eating breakfast are many and varied. |
| E．Still, that means nearly 1 in 5 youngsters does not eat breakfast. |
| F．Some young people don't know what a nutritious breakfast includes. |
| G．Besides, eating breakfast helps to reduce the frequency of getting angry. |
【推荐1】A company called Neuralink has shared a video where a monkey is playing a video game. That' s fairly unusual, but what makes the video even stranger is that the monkey is playing the video game with just his mind.
The monkey in the video is called Pager who has two of Neuralink's special "Link" devices(装置)inside his brain. The devices planted in Pager's brain are connected to 2,048 wires which lead to the parts of Pager's brain that control movements of the arms and hands.
Scientists taught Pager to play a video game. At first, Pager controlled the video game using a joystick it, which is a normal gaming controller. But as Pager played, his Link devices wirelessly sent out information about the signals his brain was using to control his arms and hands. Neuralink's scientists recorded all of these signals.
Then they used computers to match the signals from Pager's brain to the movements that his hands were actually doing. This was the most difficult work and the scientists counted on artificial intelligence ( AI) to help them decode(解码)Pager's brain signals.
The final step was to have a computer make moves in the video game as if Pager had actually moved the joystick. If Pager thought about moving the joystick up, the computer would send an “up” signal to the video game.
At first, the researchers let Pager keep moving the joystick with his hand, even though it was no longer connected to the computer. But soon Pager was able to play the video game using just his brain.
Even though Neuralink's work right now focuses on animals and video games, there's a very serious purpose behind it. Neuralink wants to make it possible for humans who have lost the ability to make physical movements to interact with the world around them.
1. What are “Link” devices used to do?| A．To pick up the arms' and hands' signals. |
| B．To link the computer to the monkey's brain. |
| C．To send out information about the brain's signals. |
| D．To control movements of the arms and hands. |
| A．Recording and sending out body signals. |
| B．Training Pager to use the joystick correctly. |
| C．Planting "Link" devices into Pager's brain. |
| D．Matching brain signals to body movements. |
| A．To test artificial intelligence. |
| B．To help those without arms or legs. |
| C．To study how animals play video games. |
| D．To develop more complex video games. |
| A．Video Games for Animals Are Developed. |
| B．Science Proves the Intelligence of Monkeys. |
| C．Monkey Plays Video Games Using His Mind. |
| D．Neuralink Is Leading the World in Technology. |
【推荐2】Our species’ incredible capacity to quickly acquire words from 300 by age 2 to over 1, 000 by age 4 isn’t fully understood. Some cognitive scientists and linguists have theorized that people are born with built-in expectations and logical constraints (约束) that make this possible. Now, however, machine-learning research is showing that preprogrammed assumptions aren’t necessary to swiftly pick up word meanings from minimal data.
A team of scientists has successfully trained a basic artificial intelligence model to match images to words using just 61 hours of naturalistic footage (镜头) and sound-previously collected from a child named Sam in 2013 and 2014. Although it’s a small slice of a child’s life, it was apparently enough to prompt the AI to figure out what certain words mean.
The findings suggest that language acquisition could be simpler than previously thought. Maybe children “don’t need a custom-built, high-class language-specific mechanism” to efficiently grasp word meanings, says Jessica Sullivan, an associate professor of psychology at Skidmore College. “This is a really beautiful study, ” she says, because it offers evidence that simple information from a child’s worldview is rich enough to kick-start pattern recognition and word comprehension.
The new study also demonstrates that it’s possible for machines to learn similarly to the way that humans do. Large language models are trained on enormous amounts of data that can include billions and sometimes trillions of word combinations. Humans get by on orders of magnitude less information, says the paper’s lead author Wai Keen Vong. With the right type of data, that gap between machine and human learning could narrow dramatically.
Yet additional study is necessary in certain aspects of the new research. For one, the scientists acknowledge that their findings don’t prove how children acquire words. Moreover, the study only focused on recognizing the words for physical objects.
Still, it’s a step toward a deeper understanding of our own mind, which can ultimately help us improve human education, says Eva Portelance, a computational linguistics researcher. She notes that AI research can also bring clarity to long-unanswered questions about ourselves. “We can use these models in a good way, to benefit science and society, ” Portelance adds.
1. What is a significant finding of machine-learning research?| A．Vocabulary increases gradually with age. |
| B．Vocabulary can be acquired from minimal data. |
| C．Language acquisition is tied to built-in expectations. |
| D．Language acquisition is as complex as formerly assumed. |
| A．Facilitate. | B．Persuade. | C．Advise. | D．Expect. |
| A．Its limitations. | B．Its strengths. | C．Its uniqueness. | D．Its process. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Cautious. | C．Dismissive. | D．Positive. |
【推荐3】Undesired side-effects and toxicities of drugs, especially in the area of new-drug development are unpredictable and often disastrous.
In order for a chemical to be considered a safe drug, it must prove safe and its benefits outweigh the risks through experiments.
Many people suffer ill effects from drugs called side effects, even though they take the drug exactly as directed. The human population contains a great variety of genetic variation, but drugs are tested on just a few thousand people.
Even though the drug has been tested. A patient may also acquire a tolerance for a certain drug, which means the patient has to take even larger doses to produce the desired effect.
| A．When a particular drug is taken by millions, some people may not respond in a predictable way |
| B．This is not a complete list of side effects and others may occur. |
| C．Tolerance may lead to addiction. |
| D．However, no substance that has the power to do this is completely safe. |
| E．Side-effects of drugs are usually provided when patients are advised by doctors to take them. |
| F．So we should take as little medicine as possible |
【推荐1】The design of a building influences the performance of the people working and studying in it. Schools are no exception. There are two main features that would make for the ideal school building: classrooms with impressive views, and carefully planned seating arrangements.
It has been shown that concentration and mental acuity actually improve when people allow their gaze to wander. Varied visual stimuli(刺激) helps the mind to absorb information on a deeper level, in much the same way that dreaming during sleep strengthens memory formation and data storage in the brain. Moreover, a pleasant view can improve students’ mood, making learning easy. Classrooms with large windows and expansive views therefore make perfect sense.
Like this concept of a “classroom with a view”, the idea of alternative classroom seating arrangements might appear somewhat unusual, yet adding this feature into the design of school buildings could have significant benefits. The traditional image of4students sitting listlessly(无精打采) in rows of desks, staring blankly at the front of the classroom, where a teacher struggles to keep their attention from drifting while lecturing about some dry mathematical phenomenon, is all too familiar. Imagine, however, a math class with groups of students gathered around separate tables, cagerly engaged in examining a real-life math problem and sharing their ideas. Instead of strictly arranged rows of desks, the ideal classroom should have a variety of more relaxed furniture arrangements, which contribute to different kinds of classroom activity and interaction.
Intelligent companies have already adopted more up-to-date design concepts into their workshops, in order to ensure employees can work to the best of their abilities. Schools should follow suit, in order to enrich students’ learning experiences.
1. Why does the author mention dreaming in Paragraph 2?| A．To show the harm of daydreaming. |
| B．To stress the importance of a good sleep. |
| C．To prove the benefits of impressive window views. |
| D．To explain the phenomenon of sleeping during the class. |
| A．communicate better with each other. |
| B．relax during a stressful examination. |
| C．listen more closely to the teacher. |
| D．clean the classroom easily2. |
| A．Set an example. | B．Be an exception. |
| C．Do the same thing. | D．Come up with new ideas. |
【推荐2】When talking about colds, maybe some people say it is very common. During the cold winter days, many people will complain the cold winter makes them catch a cold, and what they feel upset are not only the headache, cough but also the runny nose. It is so embarrassing when they forget to take a handkerchief of tissue along with them.
What to stay away from colds? Put on a happy face.
“Compared to unhappy people, those who are cheerful and relaxed are less likely to suffer from cold, according to a new study. It’s possible that being happy helps the body fight illnesses,” said the researchers from New University.
“It seems that positive feelings may reduce the danger of illness,” said the study’s chief researcher Sheldon Cohen.
In an earlier study, Cohen found that people who were cheerful and lively caught coughs and colds less often. People who showed feelings were also less likely to tell their doctors that they felt ill.
In this study, Cohen has interviewed 193 adults every day for two weeks. During the interviews, the people told researchers that they were given colds by doctors and had to stay alone in a room for six days.
The results showed that everyone in the study was equally likely to get ill. But for people who said they felt happy during the research period, their illness are less serious and lasted for a shorter time.
Cohen believes that when people experience positive feelings, their body may produce a chemical that helps fight illness and disease. So if you are worried about your health, look on the brighter side more often.
1. The underline part in Paragraph 5 is probably means ___________.| A．sad | B．bad-tempered |
| C．thoughtful | D．outgoing |
| A．People who felt happy never got ill. |
| B．People’s feelings didn’t influence their health. |
| C．People with good feelings became ill more easily. |
| D．People with positive feelings had less serious illnesses. |
| A．Eating. | B．Laughing |
| C．Crying | D．Sleeping. |
【推荐3】Fatigue can actually be considered a kind of poisoning. When a muscle in our body works, it produces lactic acid. If we remove the lactic acid from a tired muscle, it is able to start working again at once!
There are other substances the body produces in the course of muscular activity. These are known as “fatigue toxins.” The blood carries these through the body, so that the muscle itself, and especially the brain feels tired.
Scientists have conducted interesting experiments on fatigue. If a dog is made to work until it is exhausted and falls asleep, and its blood is then transfused into another dog, the second dog will instantly become “tired” and fall asleep! If the blood of a wide awake dog is transfused into a tired sleeping dog, the latter will wake up at once, no longer tired!
But fatigue is not just a chemical process, it is also a biological process. We cannot just “remove” fatigue; we must allow the cells of the body to rest. Damages must be repaired, nerve cells of the brain must be “recharged,” and the joints of the body must replace used up lubricants. Sleep will always be necessary as a way of restoring our body’s energy after fatigue.
Very often, the best way to make a tired body part feel fresh again is to make other parts of the body active! We can actually rest by means of activity. Activity increases the respiration (呼吸). The blood circulates faster, the glands are more active, and the waste products are eliminated from the tired part of the body. But, if you are totally exhausted, the best thing to do is sleep!
1. What does the underlined word “it” refer to in the first paragraph?| A．Fatigue. | B．Lactic acid. | C．The body. | D．The tired muscle. |
| A．Fatigue is a chemical process. | B．Fatigue makes a dog sleepy. |
| C．Sleep can reduce fatigue. | D．We cannot remove fatigue. |
| A．Having a blood transfusion. | B．Doing upper limb movements. |
| C．Drinking plenty of water. | D．Playing a football game. |
| A．Entertainment. | B．Health. | C．Fashion. | D．Sports. |
