英语六级阅读练习：我们该不该吃早餐？

　　英语六级考试阅读理解材料大多选自《时代》《卫报》《今日美国》等外刊。小编为大家搜集《卫报》《时代》等外刊上的文章供大家进行阅读练习。

　　【今日阅读推荐】本篇阅读材料我们该不该吃早餐?选自《卫报》(原文标题：Should I eat breakfast? 2012.10.28)。如果大家觉得比较简单，就当作泛读材料了解了解，认识几个新单词或新表达方式也不错。如果大家觉得这些材料理解上有难度，不妨当做挑战自己的拔高训练，希望大家都有进步^^

　　重点推荐：

　　Studies have shown that a good breakfast could hold the key to healthiness.

　　Up to two-thirds of us skip the first meal of the day but nutritionists say we should breakfast like kings and eat less later. There is some research that links eating a good breakfast with a reduction in the risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. While its tempting to miss breakfast when youre on a diet, its not clear that this helps you to lose weight.

　　Last week a research team from Imperial College London presented its findings at the Neuroscience 2012 conference. The researchers scanned the brains of 21 healthy people as they showed them a variety of foods including chocolate, pizza and salad. They compared how attractive the foods were to people, as well as how much they ate for lunch after the scan on two days, one on which breakfast was missed and one on which they ate a large breakfast . The researchers found that missing breakfast increased the appeal of high-calorie foods and that people ate about 250 calories more at lunch. The researchers said this shows breakfast takes the edge off our appetite so we dont crave high-calorie foods. So, how should we be starting our days?

　　The solution

　　Studies have come up with a variety of suitable breakfast foods. There is some evidence in favour of the full English version . However, that study was done on mice and is not convincing although the mice who ate a good breakfast were less likely to get chubby.

　　Chocolate cake is recommended by researchers from Tel Aviv University who found that a 600-calorie breakfast with proteins and carbohydrates, including a sweet treat, controlled cravings for sweet things for the rest of the day and kickstarted the bodys metabolism. Their study looked at 193 obese people over 32 weeks and found those who ate sweet things at breakfast lost an average of 40lb more than those who didnt.

　　A study in the US journal Pediatrics of more than 2,000 teenagers found that a quarter missed breakfast but that those who ate it were on average five pounds lighter than those who didnt.

　　However, it is always hard to prove cause and effect in dieting studies. People who eat breakfast often turn out to take more exercise and drink less alcohol so there may be other reasons for their weight loss.

　　A review of the research that added up results of nine studies on the relationship between eating breakfast cereals and weight, found that children and adults who regularly ate breakfast cereals were less likely to be overweight than those who did not eat them. The authors say this doesnt provide proof that cereals help you stay slim and that there was no evidence that their cereal eaters ate less throughout the day.

　　So, although eating breakfast is linked with being slimmer, this may simply be an association. There is, however, another more robust body of evidence that suggests children benefit from eating breakfast because it helps them to concentrate.

　　【重点单词及短语】

　　hold the key to 掌握

　　frontal cortex 额叶皮层(大脑的一部分)

　　take the edge off 减弱(胃口)等;使变弱

　　crave v. 渴求;渴望

　　prime v. 使准备好;做准备

　　metabolism n. 新陈代谢

　　Question time:

　　1. What are the findings of researchers from Imperial College London?

　　2. Can you list the benefits of having breakfast according to the passage?