题型:阅读理解 题类:常考题 难易度:普通
四川省成都市石室中学2019-2020学年高二上学期英语9月入学考试试卷(含小段音频)
The fridge is considered necessary. It has been so since the 1960s when packaged food list appeared with the label: "Store in the refrigerator."
In my fridge less Fifties childhood, I was fed well and healthy. The milkman came every day, the grocer, the butcher, the baker, and the ice-cream man delivered two or three times each w eek. The Sunday meat would last until Wednesday and the bread and milk left became all kinds of cakes. Nothing was wasted, and w e w ere never troubled by rotten food. Thirty years on, food deliveries have stopped, and fresh vegetables are almost impossible to get in the country.
The invention of the fridge contributed comparatively little to the art of food preservation. Many well-tried techniques already existed — natural cooling, drying, smoking, salting, sugaring, bottling...
What refrigeration did promote was marketing — marketing hardware and electricity, marketing soft drinks, marketing dead bodies of animals around the world in search of a good price.
Consequently, most of the world's fridges are to be found, not in the tropics where they might prove useful, but in the rich countries with mild temperatures where they are climatically almost unnecessary. Every winter, millions of fridges hum (make a low continuous sound) away continuously, and at vast expense, busily maintaining an artificially-cooled space inside an artificially-heated house —while outside, nature provides the desired temperature free of charge.
The fridge's effect upon the environment has been clear, while its contribution to human happiness has been unimportant. If you don't believe me, try it yourself, invest in a food cupboard and turn off your fridge next winter. You may miss the hamburgers, but at least you'll get rid of that terrible hum.
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