Text 3. The Hot Dog

In its home country in Germany the hot dog is called the frankfurter. It is named after Frankfurt, a German city. Frankfurters were first sold in the U.S. in 1860s. Americans called frankfurters "dachshund sausages". A dachshund is a dog from Germany with a very long body and short legs.

Dachshund sausages first became popular in New York, especially at baseball games. At games they were sold by men who kept them warm in hot water tanks. As the men were walking up and down the rows of people, they yelled, "Eat your hot dachshund sausage."

One day in 1906 a newspaper cartoonist Tad Dorgan went to a baseball game. When he saw the men with the dachshund sausages, he got an idea for a cartoon. The next day at the newspaper office he drew a bun with a dachshund inside — not a dachshund sausage, but a dachshund. Dorgan didn’t know how to spell dachshund. Under the cartoon he wrote, "Eat your hot dogs!"

The cartoon was a sensation, and so was the new name.

Text 4. Food for Different Cultures

Have you ever stopped to really think about what you and your family eat everyday and why? Have you ever stopped to think what other people eat? In the movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, there are two scenes in which the two lead characters are offered meals from a different culture. One meal, meant to break the ice, consisted of insects. The second meal was a lavish banquet that featured such delicacies as roasted beetles, live snakes, eyeball soup, and chilled monkey brains for dessert. Some cultures eat such things as vipers and rattlesnakes, bush rats, dog meat, horsemeat, bats, animal heart, liver, eyes, and insects of all sorts. Sound good?

The manner in which food is selected, prepared, presented, and eaten often differs by culture. One man’s pet is another person’s delicacy — dog, anyone? Americans love beef, yet it is forbidden to Hindus, while the forbidden food in [the] Moslem and Jewish cultures is normally pork, eaten extensively by the Chinese and others. In large cosmopolitan cities, restaurants often cater to diverse diets and offer "national" dishes to meet varying cultural tastes. Feeding habits also differ, and the range goes from hands and chopsticks to full sets of cutlery. Even when cultures use a utensil such as a fork, one can distinguish a European from an American by which hand holds the implement. Subcultures, too, can be analysed from this perspective, such as the executive’s dining room, the soldier’s mess... or the ladies’ tearoom, and the vegetarian’s restaurant.

Often the differences among cultures in the foods they eat are related to the differences in geography and local resources. People who live near water (the sea, lakes, and rivers) tend to eat more fish and crustaceans. People who live in colder climates tend to eat heavier, fatty foods. However, with the development of a global economy, food boundaries and differences are beginning to dissipate: McDonalds is now on every continent except Antarctica, and tofu and yoghurt are served all over the world.