Process Unit

Food

Vocabulary (5 Minutes)

Directions: Try to guess the meaning of the highlighted words based on your knowledge of English. In each set of words, underline the two words that have similar meanings to the words in bold letters on the left. Use your dictionaries if necessary. The first one has been done for you.

1. accumulate	a. increase	b. decrease	c. grow
2. conclude	a. decide	b. end	c. presume
3. reverse	a. undo	b. turn back	c. oppose
4. alternative	a. change	b. option	c. choice
5. melt away	a. disappear	b. thaw	c. vanish
6. undertake	a. perform	b. carry out	c. start
7. component	a. part	b. ingredient	c. element
8. contain	a. have	b. be full of	c. inhibit
9. potent	a. powerful	b. strong	c. intoxicating

Rapid Reading Warm-Up (30 Seconds)

Directions: The exercise below has 25 problems that will help you read faster. You will have only 30 seconds to finish. You will probably not finish all 25 problems, but you are to work as quickly as you can. Be careful not to make any error, so read rapidly but carefully. In this exercise, there are six words: one word to the left of the line and five to the right. Read the word on the left and then find it among the five words to the right. Once you have found it, circle it.

Example

raft	rift	rate	raft	rote	reef
1. long	lung	lounge	longs	long	linger
2. evidence	evident	evades	evidence	evidently	residence
3. research	researchers	retouch	research	researches	researcher
4. reverse	reversal	reverses	rivers	reveals	reverse
5. specialize	specialist	specialty	special	specialist	specializes
6. right	riot	rights	rightly	night	right
7. food	foot	food	found	foods	ford
8. identify	identity	indemnify	identify	identifies	mystify
9. bean	been	boon	bean	beans	bone
10. shows	shoes	shower	showed	should	shows
11. ability	able	agility	abler	ability	capability
12. your	yore	youth	young	your	yours
13. performs	reforms	perform	performs	prefers	performance
14. baked	baker	bakes	booked	beard	baked
15. reduce	deduce	reduces	reducer	deduct	reduce
16. potent	patent	potency	potent	potato	potentate
17. great	great	grate	grit	gratin	greet
18. blood	bleed	blunt	boodle	blood	blouse
19. uses	user	abuses	used	uses	using
20. rate	rote	rant	rate	rates	rated
21. affects	effects	affect	affected	effected	affects
22. prescribe	prescribes	scribe	describe	prescribe	prescribed
23. based	bossed	baser	bases	basin	based
24. leek	look	leak	lock	leaks	leek
25. there	tear	here	then	there	these

First Reading (3 Minutes for Preview – 3½ Minutes for Reading)

Directions: Starting with the first sentence of the passage, read as quickly as you can for three and a half minutes. Circle the last word you read when the time is up.

Second Reading (3½ Minutes)

Directions: Starting with the first sentence of the passage, read as quickly as you can for three and a half minutes. Circle the last word you read when the time is up.

Third Reading (3½ Minutes)

Directions: Starting with the first sentence of the passage, read as quickly as you can for three and a half minutes. Circle the last word you read when the time is up.

Fourth Reading (3½ Minutes)

Directions: Starting with the first sentence of the passage, read as quickly as you can for three and a half minutes. Circle the last word you read when the time is up.

Line

Word

Count

Food Can Reverse Disease

Author Unknown

Doctors have long told patients that medicine is something you swallow in a pill, but evidence is accumulating that shows the best medicine might be found in your grocery store, not your pharmacy. More and more, researchers are concluding that the right foods will not only prevent disease but, in some cases, actually cure it as well.

“Most major diseases can be reversed through nutritional approaches,” said Joel Fuhrman, MD, a physician who specializes in nutritional medicine as an alternative to surgery and drugs. “Food is more effective than medicine,” he stated. “All we’ve got to do is eat right, and disease melts away.” Fuhrman is the author of the book Fasting and Eating for Health, a Medical Doctor’s Program for Conquering Disease.

Some members of the medical establishment find Fuhrman’s views on food and disease a bit extreme, but he is not alone in his belief that diet plays an important role in human health. Researchers at the University of Illinois are undertaking a major program to identify food components that can fight disease and promote good health. One of the program’s major foods is the soybean.

“There has been a tremendous amount of information that shows the soybean’s ability to reduce cholesterol,” said Clare M. Hasler, director of the Functional Foods for Health Program at the University of Illinois, “and by lowering your cholesterol, you lower the risks for disease.

In one of the three clinical tests on humans performed at the university, a diet that included 50 grams of soy per day – in the form of beverages and baked goods – was found to “significantly reduce cholesterol in a four-week period,” according to Hasler. She cautions that people with elevated cholesterol levels should see a physician but said soy can safely be introduced into the diet as part of an overall health-improvement strategy.

According to Keith Block, MD, “Soy has one of the most potent medical pharmacies, all in that little bean. Soy is a great preventive food and probably has significant treatment benefits for cancer patients.” Soybeans contain a compound that naturally inhibits the supply of nutrients and blood that cancerous tumors need to grow. At Block’s private practice in Evanston, Illinois, he uses what he calls “therapeutic nutrition” as one component for treating cancer patients.

“We also know that the recurrence rate for breast cancer is influenced by fat intake,” he said. “It appears that it only requires a small amount of fat to significantly increase a patient’s chances for recurrence. Even for patients with advanced breast cancer, fat intake seriously affects the outcome of the disease. (For women who already have breast cancer), there is approximately a 150% increase in the risk of death for every additional 100 grams of fat consumed per month.”

For patients, Block prescribes a diet that is based on grains, pasta and breads, a wide variety of vegetables, and proteins, which include fish or soy and other legumes. Block’s latest reviews on the medicinal benefits of food have shown that:

· Flesh and fish oils can reduce the growth of breast cancer cells as well as problems with autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

· Vegans (people who eat no animal products) have two and a half times the cancer killing potential as meat eaters.

· Cabbage, onions, leeks, garlic and chives have the power to detoxify drugs, chemicals and pollutants in the body.

· Cabbage helps halt the spread of breast cancer and can significantly reduce stomach cancer.

· Chickpeas (garbanzo beans) and other beans are blood sugar stabilizers.

· Oats reduce blood cholesterol levels and, therefore, cardiac risk.

Adapted from Discovery

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199

261

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353

408

457

500

547

602

Reading Comprehension (10 Minutes)

Directions: Circle the letter next to the statement that best answers the following questions.

1. A better title for the article would be _____.

a. The Power of Soybeans

b. The Role of Food in Health

c. The Role of Diet in Preventing and Curing Disease

d. Alternative Medicine and Diet

2. The thesis statement of the article begins in _____.

a. line 3

b. line 6

c. line 10

d. line 12

3. The issue discussed in the article is _____.

a. whether soybeans should be included in everyone’s diet

b. how a healthy diet can prevent and possibly cure diseases

c. some doctors think Dr. Fuhrman is crazy

d. lowering your cholesterol level lowers the risk for disease

4. Based on information in the article, you can logically infer that Dr. Block_____.

a. agrees with Dr. Fuhrman’s views on healthy nutrition as medicine

b. eats a lot of cabbage, onions, and leeks

c. is married to a woman with breast cancer

d. lives in Evanston, Illinois

5. Based on information in the article, you can logically infer that the Japanese, whose daily diet includes soybean products, _____.

a. eat large amounts of baked goods

b. go to Dr. Block for treatment

c. have lower cholesterol levels than Arabs and Europeans

d. have read Fasting and Eating for Health, a Medical Doctor’s Program for Conquering Disease

6. _____ grams of soy per day significantly lowers cholesterol levels.

a. 3

b. 15

c. 50

d. 75

7. The University of Illinois is conducting _____ clinical tests on people.

a. three

b. four

c. five

d. six

8. _____ detoxifies drugs.

a. fish oil

b. meat

c. onions

d. oats

9. _____ reduces problems with lupus.

a. fish oil

b. garlic

c. cabbage

d. chickpeas

10. The recurrence rate for breast cancer is affected by _____ intake.

a. vegans

b. grains

c. fat

d. chives

11. According to Dr. Block, a healthy diet should include _____.

a. grains, pasta, breads

b. vegetables and proteins

c. both “a” and “b”