2024 年 12 月大学英语六级考试真题（第 1 套）

A)On a small fruit farm near the Straits of Malacca, Lim Kok Ann is down to just one tree growing kedondong, a crunchy, sour berry that Malaysians mostly use in pickles (腌菜) and salads. "It's not very well-known," says the 45-year-old, who is instead focusing on longan (龙眼) berries and pineapples, which have bigger markets. "We have to grow what is profitable," he says.

B)But less than an hour away in the Malaysian countryside, inside three giant, silver domes, scientists are trying to change the future of food. They're pushing the boundaries of what humans eat by growing and processing so-called 'alternative' crops—such as kedondong. At the headquarters of global research centre Crops For the Future (CFF) this particular under-used fruit has been turned into a sugar-free juice, high in vitamin C and getting top marks in sensory evaluations. "Anything you see here is a forgotten crop," says Sayed Azam-Ali of the abundant plants weaving through the gardens of CFF outside Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur.

C)Prof Azam-Ali explains that just four crops—wheat, maize, rice and soybean—provide two-thirds of the world's food supply. "We're dependent on these four," he says. "But actually there's 7,000 crops we've been farming for thousands of years. We ignore all of those." Researchers are trying to unlock the potential of these ignored crops—plants they describe as forgotten, under-used or 'alternative' as they are displaced by increasingly uniform diets fuelled by processed ingredients from the major crops.

D)It's a timely quest. The food sector is already responsible for nearly a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. By 2050 it estimates the world must produce 50% more food to feed the projected global population of 10 billion. Meeting this demand without contributing to climate change calls for urgent solutions.

E)Forgotten crops hold key answers. By investing in neglected local plants, countries can reduce their reliance on imported crops and their carbon-heavy supply chains. Bringing back the variety of crops humans once ate also boosts food security at a time warming climates threaten existing crops. On top of that forgotten crops are among the most climate-resilient (具有气候韧性的) and nutritious, argues Azam-Ali. His summary is plain: "Dietary diversification is critical to the future of humanity."

F)Food security experts agree. "There is no food insecurity in the world, there is food ignorance," says Cecilia Tortajada, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Water Policy at the National University of Singapore. "Whenever we have native crops we tend to disregard them as if they were not valuable but they are," she adds.

G)Azam-Ali knows that scepticism firsthand. He came across alternative crops in the 1980s through the work of women farmers he met in Niger. The then-PhD student remembers marvelling at the crops they grew in their backyards, without the benefits of technology, to feed their families when the big crops failed. He saw a tremendous opportunity to build alternative food systems. But "the resistance was enormous," he recalls.

H)Undeterred, he ploughed on. Project after project helped prove these crops were viable in different environments as alternatives to the staple ones. But the question of whether these crops would be marketable remained. "That's the critical thing," he says. In one of the centre's domes, food technologist Tan Xinlin uses powdered moringa (辣木) leaves in place of some wheat flour to bake a cake lower in gluten (谷胶) and higher in nutrients. Tan's job is to create recipes with these still-unfamiliar ingredients that will appeal to both local and international tastes. In recent years she has used some of the forgotten crops grown at CFF, such as moringa and bambara groundnut, to make everything from instant soup to Indian snacks. "I try to modernise forgotten crops instead of using old recipes," says Tan, who is also a trained chef. It's a strategy to appeal to the world's growing middle classes who are increasingly turning to the fast and processed food industries. It's also a way to help counter perceptions of local crops as "old or poor people's food" or as inferior "women's crops", adds Tan.

I)The roots of these connotations about local foods can run deep. The bambara groundnut, a protein-rich native crop of sub-Saharan Africa that is also grown in parts of southeast Asia, can trace its marginalisation to colonial rule. "African women who grew bambara groundnut were actually punished for growing it," says Azam-Ali. "Colonial powers said you can't grow that because there's no oil. We can't get a market for it." But today the bambara murukku is one of CFF's best-reviewed foods and they are aiming to get it into grocery stores, pointing to the success of crops like quinoa to potential investors. Some 30 years ago, quinoa was virtually unheard of outside its native mountains in Bolivia and Peru. Today the nutritious grain is found on the menus of lavish restaurants across the world.

J)Measuring crops by nutrition instead of yield is at the heart of the forgotten foods enterprise. Ever since the "green revolution" of the 1960s, high-yielding crops have dominated modern agriculture. That was in part a crucial response to devastating famines at a time when the world needed to increase its food supply. Today "nutrition is becoming a time bomb", says Azam-Ali, as growing carbon dioxide levels strip crops of their minerals. Instead of bio-fortifying major crops we should be investing in those forgotten crops that are already more nutritious, he asserts.

K)In the bowels of CFF's third dome, lab manager Gomathy Sethuraman opens a window into the centre's "crown jewels", revealing vines of winged beans growing under a bright yellow light. It's one of multiple chambers where scientists are studying the impact of higher temperatures and carbon dioxide levels on the nutritional make-up of alternative crops. This research is "the game changer", says Azam-Ali, ensuring that 'future crops' are also the healthiest ones in warmer climates.

L)There is a growing global momentum around forgotten foods, says Danielle Nierenberg, president of Food Tank, a US-based think tank. Other than CFF, which bills itself as the world's first research centre dedicated solely to under-utilised crops, there are other key groups championing agricultural diversity including Crop Trust, Slow Food, Icrisat and Bioversity International. Add to that more middle-income consumers searching for nutritious foods and others eager to try the unprocessed foods their grandparents once ate, she says.

M)But the rising interest in forgotten foods in some quarters is overtaken by the global spread of Western-style diets heavy in sugar, fat and processed foods in others.

N)N) A key obstacle to promoting fading local crops in Malaysia, for example, is "the obsession with imported products", says Jenifer Kuala, co-founder of a restaurant that champions locally-sourced food in an affluent suburb of Kuala Lumpur. Customers at Sitka, regarded as a pioneer in the country's small farm-to-table dining scene, still seek foreign ingredients as a "status symbol", she says.

O)O) The argument for forgotten foods feels intuitive. Some analysts say it is in fact inevitable. "Climate change is going to mean almost certainly tastes are going to be forced to change," says Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University of London. We "have to get used to eating other crops" as yields of staple crops fall, he says.

Imagine you're an alien sent to Earth to document the behaviour of the mammals inhabiting the planet. You stumble into a movie theatre that's showing the latest Hollywood horror film. Several dozen humans are gathered together in a dark, undecorated room. They're all staring at a rectangular area on which patterns of light change rapidly. They are clearly in a state of high arousal. Their heart rate is elevated, they occasionally glance around nervously, and they sometimes jump collectively in their seats, and emit high-pitched warning calls. Eventually, the lights come up and the rectangular screen goes black. The humans stand up and leave the room, chatting and laughing, and showing signs of pleasure. Why do these humans voluntarily expose themselves to what appears to be a deeply unpleasant experience? And why do they react so strongly to those patterns of light on a screen? I am fascinated with the paradox of horror—the strange fact that many people seek out scary entertainment. I think the answer to the puzzle lies in human nature. My research suggests that we humans evolved to find pleasure in situations that allow us to experience negative emotions in a safe context. You can see these elements of horror in children's games. Take hide-and-seek for example, which is a simulation of a predator-prey interaction. The kid hides and the adult pretends to be a predator, searching for the child while howling like a dangerous beast. This simulation gives the child crucial information about how to avoid becoming prey, and children tend to find that kind of activity deeply satisfying, presumably because it gives them a safe experience of a potentially catastrophic scenario. They find it pleasurable, and pleasure is evolution's way of motivating us toward adaptive behaviour. Horror is pleasurable to many people because it lets us play with negative emotions and develop coping strategies. We learn what it feels like to be truly afraid, and we learn how to handle negative emotion. How, then, does horror work? My research suggests that horror works by exploiting an ancient set of biological defence mechanisms—an evolved fear system, which we share with other animals. But humans are uniquely imaginative, and we use our evolved imagination to travel into virtual worlds that are full of danger. There are good reasons for watching a horror film, even if you're not a loyal horror fan. If you make it through the film in one piece, you'll probably experience a strong sense of mastery, a sense that you were able to make it through an appalling experience. Anyway, watching a horror film makes you better at handling your own fear, and who knows when that will become critically relevant?

An awakening has been taking place in the physical world against the beauty model that has been dictated to us for years. But in the digital arena, social media determines what is considered beautiful. The two opposing struggles are taking place in parallel. In the physical world, the struggle goes against the underlying pressure exerted on women to conform to an unrealistic beauty ideal. As part of the struggle, various media outlets have presented women whose bodies don't correspond to the so-called ideal. All those women who had previously been excluded from the covers of magazines, television series and the public agenda, have become "legitimate." At the same time, a group of influencers have begun to upload to social media photos of themselves without makeup, and even photos in which they highlight supposed flaws. Technology has reshaped our beauty ideal and is doing a great job communicating that message to the masses. One of the bizarre legacies of the past decade is the popularity of the "cyborg look," which illustrates what Americans will look like in 2050. The cyborg look spread rapidly. Today, however, the Instagram face has become the new beauty ideal. The internalization of accepted beauty norms is much more effective when there is active involvement in the learning process. The active involvement of users is reflected in the gamified (游戏化的) interaction offered by the social media platforms—the ability to like, write a comment, compare, share. Once the desired beauty ideal has been internalized, users are given tools or features to change their appearance to suit the accepted beauty ideal such as editing the image, choosing the ideal filter, the right background. A survey conducted in the United States revealed that more than 50% filter the images before posting them. And you will not be surprised to hear that the majority of them are women. One of the significant consequences of obsessive filtering is the emerging tendency to treat oneself as an object to be observed and valued, in the same way another person observes and judges from the side. The effect of the filters is already far beyond amiable amusement. The filters and the entire game played on the networks affect the mental health of the users. According to a study, apps like Instagram, Snapchat and FaceTune allow users to achieve a level of perfection that was previously only observed in beauty magazines. Even though humanity has always cherished beauty, in the last decade our obsession with looks has reached an unprecedented peak. The time spent on social media creates an urge to achieve an impossible beauty ideal so powerful that the only thing that can fix it is not cosmetic intervention, but mental health care.