托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Nutritional Changes in Human History

托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Nutritional Changes in Human History

Although we now think of an optimal diet as one that promotes longevity (long life), historically our optimal diet was whatever made us strong enough to have healthy children and then live long enough to help those children survive to do the same. ⬛The best measure of good nutrition is average height, which is about 80 percent genetic but is also strongly linked to childhood and adolescent calories and especially protein intake. ⬛Although big and strong people might out-hunt, out-gather, and even out-fight their smaller neighbors, they also need more calories. ⬛So people faced with chronic or recurrent food shortages are better off if they are short and lean. ⬛The small bodies of less-well-nourished humans are not only an effect of their lower intake of calories, protein, and calcium but also protection against the likelihood of even lower intakes in the future. By these metrics, our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors were remarkably well nourished. Remains from the Paleolithic Stone Age (2.6 mya to 10,000 ya) show that men had an average height of about 179 cm (5 feet 10% inches) and an estimated weight of about 67 kg (148 pounds). The women were substantially smaller, averaging an estimated 157.5 cm (5 feet 2 inches) and 54 kg (119 pounds). After agriculture began, about 10,000 years ago, in the Neolithic era, humans actually got smaller. Archaeological evidence suggests that the average Neolithic man was about 165 cm (5 feet 5 inches) tall and weighed 63 kg (139 pounds), while women were an average of 150 cm (4 feet 11 inches) and weighed 45 kg (99 pounds).

1.The word “optimal”in the passage is closest in meaning to

O healthy

O ideal

O natural

O adequate

2.Why does the author point out that “Although big and strong people might out-hunt, out-gather, and even out-fight their smaller neighbors, they also need more calories”?

O To argue that a smaller body size can be an advantage under some circumstances

O To support the claim that average height is strongly linked to childhood and adolescent calories and protein intake

O To provide evidence that our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors were remarkably well nourished

O To suggest that average height may not be the best measure of good nutrition

3.According to paragraph 1, which of the following is a true statement about relative height differences in human history?

O Stone Age men were significantly taller than the first farmers.

O Neolithic women were taller than Paleolithic women.

O Paleolithic women were taller than Neolithic men.

O The height difference between men and women increased significantly after agriculture began.

Paleolithic men were bigger than modern European men through the end of the nineteenth century and were as big as they are today. And when the Europeans came to North America, as supposedly well-nourished invaders from the most technologically advanced countries in the world, the indigenous hunter-gatherer population of the American plains was far taller than they were. Why would that be the case? It all came down to nutrition. The plains diet of the hunter-gatherers centered around grass-fed wild bison, whose meat was less fatty than meat from modern corn-fed animals. And the plains tribes ate pretty much the whole animal. By comparison, even when agriculturalists' crops provided enough calories to meet their energy requirements- -which probably were as high if not higher than those of hunter-gatherers because farmers often worked every day from dawn till dusk- _they didn't provide as much protein or calcium as the hunter-gatherers' diets did. Even nuts generally have more protein per ounce than grains, especially domesticated grains. This is why agriculturists also looked to legumes- -beans, peas, and even peanuts- for their protein, much as modern vegetarians do. But it's a challenge to get enough protein from nonanimal sources, and it was even harder in the era before supermarkets.

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