2016年12月英语四级真题（第2套）

"Sugar, alcohol and tobacco," economist Adam Smith once wrote, "are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which have become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are, therefore, extremely popular subjects of taxation."

Two and a half centuries on, most countries impose some sort of tax on alcohol and tobacco. With surging obesity levels putting increasing strain on public health systems, governments around the world have begun to toy with the idea of taxing sugar as well.

Whether such taxes work is a matter of debate. A preliminary review of Mexico's taxation found a fall in purchases of taxed drinks as well as a rise in sales of untaxed and healthier drinks. By contrast, a Danish tax on foods high in fats was abandoned a year after its introduction, amid claims that consumers were avoiding it by crossing the border to Germany to satisfy their desire for cheaper, fattier fare.

The food industry has, in general, been firmly opposed to such direct government action. Nonetheless, the renewed focus on waistlines means that industry groups are under pressure to demonstrate their products are healthy as well as tasty.

Over the past three decades, the industry has made some efforts to improve the quality of its offerings. For example, some drink manufacturers have cut the amount of sugar in their beverages.

Many of the reductions over the past 30 years have been achieved either by reducing the amount of sugar, salt or fat in a product, or by finding an alternative ingredient. More recently, however, some companies have been investing money in a more ambitious undertaking: learning how to adjust the fundamental make-up of the food they sell. For example, having salt on the outside, but none on the inside, reduces the salt content without changing the taste.

While reformulating recipes (配方) is one way to improve public health, it should be part of a multi-sided approach. The key is to remember that there is not just one solution. To deal with obesity, a mixture of approaches-including reformulation, taxation and adjusting portion sizes-will be needed. There is no silver bullet.

You may have heard some of the fashion industry horror stories: models eating tissues or cotton balls to hold off hunger, and models collapsing from hunger-induced heart attacks just seconds after they step off the runway.

Excessively skinny models have been a point of controversy for decades, and two researchers say a model's body mass should be a workspace health and safety issue. In an editorial released Monday in the American Journal of Public Health, Katherine Record and Bryn Austin made their case for government regulation of the fashion industry.

The average international runway model has a body mass index (BMI) under 16-low enough to indicate starvation by the World Health Organization's standard. And Record and Austin are worried not just about the models themselves, but about the vast number of girls and women their images influence.

"Especially girls and teens", says Record. "Seventy percent of girls aged 10 to 18 report that they define perfect body image based on what they see in magazines." That's especially worrying, she says, given that anorexia (厌食症) results in more deaths than does any other mental illness, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

It's commonly known that certain diseases are linked with occupations like lung disease in coal miners. Professional fashion models are particularly vulnerable to eating disorders resulting from occupational demands to maintain extreme thinness.

Record's suggestion is to prohibit agents from hiring models with a BMI below 18.

In April, France passed a law setting lower limits for a model's weight. Agents and fashion houses who hire models with BMI under 18 could pay $82,000 in fines and spend up to 6 months in jail. Regulating the fashion industry in the United States won't be easy, Record says. But with the new rules in France, U.S. support could make a difference. "A designer can't survive without participating in Paris Fashion Week", she says, adding, "Our argument is that the same would be true of New York Fashion Week."