Practice – Skimming a passage

This passage has four paragraphs of around 100 words each.

1 Using a timer, skim read the text to get the general idea of what it is about.

2 After 30 seconds, jump to the start of the next paragraph.

A

The diets of children have changed dramatically over the last century due to the effect of technologies (such as improved transport, canning and refrigeration), social changes (such as the establishment of boarding schools) and evolving ideas about the nutritional needs of growing bodies. Before World War I, the meals of children and adults alike would typically consist of vegetables (often potatoes), large amounts of bread (often 0.5 kg/day) and soups with small amounts of meat.

B

Imagine a 12-year-old Australian boy from 1970 standing next to a 12-year-old boy from 2010. The boy from 2010 will probably be 3-5 cm taller and 7 kg heavier than his counterpart in 1970. He will also be 25% fatter. A lot of that fat will be around the waist. The 2010 school trousers won’t fit the boy from 1970: they will be 10 cm too big around the waist. Now imagine that the two boys have a running race of over 1,600 metres: the boy from 1970 will finish 300 metres ahead of his mate from 40 years in the future.

C

There are two chances in three that the boy from 1970 walked to school each day; there are three chances in four that the boy from 2010 is driven to school by mum or dad. There are four chances in five that in 1970 the boy was allowed to play unsupervised in the neighbourhood; there is only one chance in four that in 2010 the boy will be allowed to go down to the park on his own. The boy in 1970 probably played three or four different sports; the boy from 2010 plays one or none. It is 30 times more likely that the local river was the favourite play space of the boy from 1970 than it is for the boy today.

D

What has caused these dramatic changes in the space of a single generation? There are two main theories. Increasing overweight is caused by an energy imbalance; either energy intake (food) increases, or energy expenditure decreases, or both. The ‘Gluttony Theory” argues that children are fatter because they are eating more than they used to, and more bad food (high energy density, high in fat and sugar, high in saturated fats). The “Sloth Theory” argues that children are fatter because they are less active than they used to be. The two theories have battled it out in nutrition and

physical activity journals for the last 10 years.