Pick out different names of meals from the text, tell how they are cooked and add descriptions of other unusual, queer and weird dishes you can find.

 

Read the text below and decide which answer best fits each numbered space.

 

Wellness App Aims to Improve Workplace Nutrition

By Stephanie Strom

A growing number of companies are offering their employees digital tools to help improve their (1) _____ habits in hopes of increasing productivity, reducing sick days and cutting health care costs.

With an app and a website, Zipongo, a small digital start-up, is aimed at helping employees navigate a company’s cafeteria menu to find (2) _____ that best (3) _____ a set of preferences and health goals set by the workers themselves.

But Zipongo also extends its reach to (4) _____ meals and the home kitchen, offering recipes, shopping lists and discounts on (5) _____ items like fruits and vegetables.

Since it made its debut in 2011, Zipongo has connected with some 125 companies to let employees try it, although none have made it mandatory.

While Google was an early (6) _____ a few years ago, IBM was among the most recent and began offering Zipongo to its tens of thousands of United States employees in January. Like other companies, IBM has long worked to (7) ______ its employees to healthier eating, even using a “traffic light” system to indicate which cafeteria foods might be good choices. In 2007, the company offered a $150 cash rebate for IBM families recording their healthier eating habits in a confidential online system for eight weeks.

Zipongo is also working with entities like Virgin Pulse and Benefitfocus, and health plans like Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina and Independent Health. So-called “wellness” companies are now benefiting from a provision in the federal health care law that requires insurers to cover obesity screenings and (8) _____ counseling for many employees.

On average, Zipongo (9) _____ employers a little more than $50 a year per employee for a complete set of its services, Dr. Langheier, the founder of Zipongo, said.

At Google, which has (10) _____ healthy eating for several years, employees have been using Zipongo since 2013.

About half of Google employees who signed up for Zipongo used the app at least once a month in 2014, according to a Harvard Business School case study. (One of the study’s authors is an investor in Zipongo.)

Users plug in their food (11) _____ – spicy, gluten-free, protein-rich — and, if they want, biometric data like cholesterol and blood pressure levels. Zipongo then creates a menu from the choices in Google’s cafeteria.

Google employees using Zipongo ate more fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, calcium, fish and fiber-(12) _____ foods. Google also saw a dip in red meat (13) _____ among its Zipongo users, which was one of its goals.

But Dr. Langheier, who has a degree in public health as well as a medical degree, said he did not invent Zipongo to reach only high-paid workers at tech companies like Google and IBM. Inspiration for the system came from work he did as a pro bono consultant where he first realized the obstacles doctors faced in offering (14) _____ advice to (15) _____ patients.

“We spend $8,500 a year in the U.S., on average, for health care for one person, and just $2,200 on food, yet we rank 35th globally for life expectancy,” Dr. Langheier said. “In Japan, they spend about $3,200 on health care and $3,300 on food – and they rank second for life expectancy.”

(The New York Times)

 

1. a) meal b) grocery c) eating d) food

2. a) choices b) decisions c) options d) preferences

3. a) meet b) determine c) correspond d) challenge

4. a) dine-out b) fast c) snack d) takeout

5. a) shopping b) grocery c) shortlist d) product

6. a) adopter b) introducer c) implementer d) installer

7. a) steer b) pursue c) supply d) wheel

8. a) meal b) food c) nutritional d) dietician

9. a) tolls b) bids c) demands d) charges

10. a) promoted b) advertised c) enhanced d) primed

11. a) inclinations b) preferences c) priorities d) interests

12. a) full b) filled c) rich d) abundant

13. a) consumption b) take-in c) use d) charge

14. a) dietician b) meal c) food d) diet

15. a) thick b) overweight c) badly-figured d) fatty

 

Flashback to Grammar 2. Modal Verbs

 

Fill in the gaps with the proper modal verb or its equivalent and the required form of the infinitive for the verb in brackets.

 

JUNK FOOD HEAVEN

 

I __________ (1 clean) out the fridge the other day. Down on my knees, I __________ (2 unwrap) pieces of foil and peering cautiously into Tupperware containers for about ten minutes, when I came across an interesting product called a breakfast pizza and I examined it with a kind of rueful fondness as you __________ (3 regard) an old photograph of yourself dressed in clothes that you _________ (4 not / believe) you ever thought were stylish. The breakfast pizza, you see, represented the last surviving relic of a bout of very serious retail foolishness on my part.

Some weeks ago my wife and I agreed that I __________ (5 go) to the supermarket with her next time because the stuff she kept bringing home was – how __________ (6 I / put) this? – not fully in the spirit of American eating. Here we __________ (7 live) in a paradise of junk food – the country that gave the world cheese in a spray can – and she kept bringing home healthy stuff like fresh broccoli and packets of Ryvita.

It was because she was English, of course. She __________ (8 not / understand) the rich, unrivalled possibilities for greasiness and goo that the American diet __________ (9 offer). I longed for artificial bacon bits, melted cheese in a shade of yellow unknown to nature, and creamy chocolate fillings. I wanted food that squirts when you bite into it or plops on to your shirt front in such gross quantities that you __________ (10 rise) carefully from the table and limbo over to the sink to __________ (11 clean) yourself up. So I accompanied her to the market and while she was off squeezing melons and pricing shiitake mushrooms I made for the junk food section – which was essentially all the rest of the store. Well, it was heaven.

The breakfast cereals alone ____________ (12 occupy) me for most of the afternoon. There __________ (13 be) 200 types. Every possible substance that __________ (14 dry), __________ (15 puff) and __________ (16 coat) with sugar was there.

I grabbed one of each of the cereals and two of the oatmeal – how often I’ve said that you __________ (17 not / start) a day without a big steaming bowl of cookies – and sprinted with them back to the trolley.

‘What’s that?’ my wife asked in the special tone of voice with which she often addresses me in retail establishments.

‘Breakfast for the next six months,’ I panted as I dashed past, ‘and you __________ (18 not / think) even about putting any of it back and getting muesli.’

__________ the market for junk food (19 proliferate) so much? Everywhere I turned I was confronted with foods guaranteed to make you waddle, most of which were entirely new to me.

It __________ (20 be) the breakfast pizza that finally made my wife snap. She looked at the box and said,

‘No, you __________ (21 never / bring) home something called breakfast pizza. You _________ (22 have)’ – she reached out into the trolley foe some specimen samples – ‘root beer buttons and toaster strudel and …’ She lifted out a packet she hadn’t noticed before. ‘What’s this?’

‘Microwave pancakes,’ I said.

‘You __________ (23 eat) it all,’ she said. ‘Every bit of everything that you don’t put back on the shelves now.’

‘Of course,’ was the only thing I __________ (24 say) in my sincerest voice.

She actually made me eat it. I spent weeks working my way through a symphony of American junk food, and it was all awful. I thought American junk food __________ (25 get) worse or my taste buds __________ (26 mature), but even the treats I’d grown up with now seemed discouragingly pallid or disgustingly sickly. And then, feeling peckish, I went off to the larder to see if I __________ (27 find) a nice plain piece of Ryvita and maybe a stick of celery.

(after “Notes from a Big Country” by Bill Bryson)

 

Consolidation