Food can be dangerous for your health!

Before you read:

Do you think food can be dangerous? Why?

When you go to a restaurant you often think that the food you are ordering is good for you. But many restaurants serve healthy food, like fish or salad, with a sauce or dressing that uses a lot of oil, fat, or sugar. The British Food Standards Agency wants all restaurants to say in their menus exactly what is in each dish, how many calories, how much fat, and what additives. They think that restaurants don’t give their customers enough information, and that this new plan could help people to have a healthier diet.

But chefs are not happy with the Agency’s plan. One top chef said, People are not stupid. They know that many sauces have butter and cream in them. But if we put on a menu that a dish has 1,000 calories, nobody is going to order it!’

However, many doctors agree with the plan. Bruce Ward, Professor of Medicine, said, ‘People know that cigarettes are bad for them, because it tells you on the packet. But when they go to a restaurant they often have no idea if the food is healthy or not. Food products that have a lot of calories, fat, and sugar need a health warning, exactly like cigarettes.’

Read the article. Circle a, b or c.

1. Many restaurants…

a. serve healthy food.

b. only serve fish and salad.

c. serve healthy food but with unhealthy sauces.

2. The British Food Standards Agency wants restaurants…

a. to serve healthy food.

b. to give more information about their dishes.

c. not to use fat and additives.

3. Chefs think that…

a. people are not going to order their dishes.

b. people are stupid.

c. cream and butter are good for you.

4. Doctors think that people…

a. need more information about cigarettes.

b. need more information about food.

c. need to stop eating in restaurants.

Text (New English File Elementary, p. 87)

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Food and drink

THE ENGLISH BREAKFAST

In a real English breakfast you have fried eggs, bacon, sausage, tomato and mushrooms. Then there's toast and marmalade. There's an interesting story about the word "marmalade". It may come from the French "Marie est malade", or "Mary is ill." That's because a seventeenth-century Queen of Scotland, Mary Queen of Scots, liked it. She always asked for French orange jam when she was ill.

PANCAKES

British people eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday in February or March. For pancakes you need flour, eggs and milk. Then you eat them with sugar and lemon. In some parts of Britain there are pancake races on Shrove Tuesday. People race with a frying pan in one hand. They have to "toss" the pancake, throw it in the air and catch it again in the frying pan.

ROAST BEEF AND YORKSHIRE PUDDING

This is the traditional Sunday lunch from Yorkshire in the north of England. It is now popular all over Britain. Yorkshire pudding is not sweet. It's a simple mixture of eggs, flour and milk, but it's delicious.

Two common vegetables with roast beef and Yorkshire pudding are Brussels sprouts and carrots. And of course there's always gravy. That's a thick, brown sauce. You make gravy with the juice from the meat.

HAGGIS

Haggis is a traditional food from Scotland. You make it with meat, onions, flour, salt and pepper. Then you boil it in the skin from a sheep's stomach — yes, a sheep's stomach.

In Scotland, people eat haggis on Burns Night. Robert Burns (Scots people call him "Rabbie" Burns), was a Scottish poet in the eighteenth century. Every year Scots people all over the world remember him and read his poems.

TEA

Tea is Britain's favourite drink. It's also a meal in the afternoon. You can eat tea at home or in a hotel. Tea at the Ritz hotel in London is very good. You can drink Indian or China tea. There are cucumber sandwiches and scones. (Scones are plain cakes. You eat them with jam and cream.) There are chocolate cakes and cream cakes too.

Afternoon tea is taken at about 5 o'clock but can hardly be called a meal. It is a cup of tea with bread-and-butter and cake or biscuits.

In most well-to-do English houses dinner is the biggest meal of the day and it comes rather late, when the family gather at home after their work and studies. The evening meal is called dinner or supper j depending on its size. Englishmen usually begin it with soup followed by fish or some kind of meat with potatoes or vegetables, then fruit or coffee. In most houses this meal is the chief and the last one of the day.

Working people usually have supper in the evening. Supper is a light meal. It is a meat dish, followed by canned food or tea and cake It is taken between 7 or 9 o'clock as a rule.

(after C.E. Eckersley "Essential English for Foreign Students", Book 2)

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In the past, traditional steakhouses were very popular places, but now many people prefer for­eign food. Every British town has Indian and Chinese restaurants, and large towns have restau­rants from many other countries too.

Pubs are also very popular. There are over 60,000 pubs in the UK (53,200 in England and Wales, 5,200 in Scotland and 1,600 in Northern Ireland). British people drink an average of 99.4 litres of beer every year. More than 80% of this beer is drunk in pubs and clubs.

THE BRITISH AND TEA

The British population drinks about 2,000,000,000 cups of tea a day! That is an average of nearly 1,040 cups of tea a year for each person. Tea — mostly green tea from China — came to Britain in the late 1500s, bui it was only for the very rich. It became cheaper about three hundred years later, when it was planted in India and later in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). People from all classes started drinking it. But some people thought that too much tea was bad for your health. So they started putting milk in it, to make it healthier!

AFTERNOON TEA, HIGH TEA, LUNCH AND DINNER

Afternoon tea is a small meal, not a drink. Now most ordinary British families do not have tune for afternoon tea at home, but in the past it was a tra­dition. It became popular about a hundred and fifty years ago, when rich ladies invited their friends to their houses for an afternoon cup of tea. They started offering their visitors sandwiches and cakes too. Soon everybody was enjoying this excit­ing new meal.

But the British working population did not have afternoon tea. They had a meal at about midday, and a meal after work, between five and seven o'clock. This meal was called 'high tea', or just 'tea'. Some families in Scotland and the north of England still have 'high tea' and some restaurants in these areas offer it too. High tea is a big meal with a main dish — meat or fish — followed by bread and butter and cakes. You drink lots of cups of tea with high tea.

Today, most people have a meal between 12 and 2 p.m. In the past, this meal was called 'din­ner' in working families. But now most people call it lunch'. 'Dinner' has become a bigger meal in the evenings.

Based on British Life by A. Collins

FISH AND CHIPS

Fish and chips is the classic English take-away food. It is usually bought ready cooked at special shops — fish and chip shops (or 'chippies' as they are sometimes called) — and taken away wrapped in paper to be eaten at home or outside. If you go to a fish and chip shop, you'll be asked if you want salt and vinegar to be sprinkled over your chips. Be careful because sometimes they give you too much!

WOULD YOU LIKE A CUPPA?

If someone asks you if you would like a cuppa, they are asking if you would like a cup of tea.

If someone says 'let me be mother' or 'shall I be mother', they are offering to pour out the tea from the teapot.

BRITISH DINNER

A typical British meal for dinner is meat and 'two veg.' A gravy covers the meat, and one of the vegetables is almost always potatoes/The British eat a lot of potatoes. However, this meal is rarely eaten nowadays — most people in Britain are eating curry. In fact, the most recent survey found that curry is now Britain's most popular meal!

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