饥饿的大陆

重庆 李 娟

受营养不良的影响，非洲的孩子们正饱受发育迟缓的困扰。

文章词数 6 分钟292 难度 ★★★ 建议用时

1When I first started traveling to Africa, I would often meet children and try to guess their ages. I was shocked to find out how often I guessed wrong. Kids I thought were 7 or 8 years old based on their height were actually 12 or 13 years old.

2What I was witnessing was the terrible impact of malnutrition in Africa. These children were suffering from a condition known as stunting （发育迟缓）. They were not starving, but they were not getting enough to eat, leaving them years behind in their development.

3Worldwide, one in four children is stunted. Three-quarters of them live in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. However, while stunting has declined by more than a third in South Asia since 1990,in sub-Saharan Africa, the number of stunted children is still on the rise, up 12 million since 1990 to 56 million. Forty percent of all children in sub-Saharan Africa are stunted.

4I run into a lot of people from rich countries who still think of Africa as a continent of starvation, which in fact is an outdated picture. Thanks to economic growth and smart policies, the extreme hunger and starvation that once defined the continent are now rare. Today the issue isn't the quantity of food but the quality—whether kids are getting enough protein and other nutrients to fully develop.

5If I could have one wish, I would want the world to have a better understanding of malnutrition and how to solve it. I hope we will continue to make progress. But what's not in doubt is the importance of giving all children the nutrition they need for a healthy start to life. Their future depends on it, and so does Africa's.

Reading Check

Ⅰ. Choose the best answers according to the text.

Ⅱ. Discussion

What can be used to describe the author's characteristic according to the text?

Language Study

Ⅰ. Discover useful structures in the text

1. “leave + 宾语+ 宾补”结构意为“使……处于某种状态”。They were not starving, but they were not getting enough to eat, leaving them years behind in their development. 他们没有挨饿，但没有获得足够的吃的东西，这让他们的发育延缓了多年。

2. “so +助动词+主语”引导肯定的倒装句，意为“……也是一样”。Their future depends on it, and so does Africa's. 他们的未来取决于它，非洲的未来也是如此。

Ⅱ. Memorize some text-centered chunks

be shocked to do 很震惊……

find out 查明；弄清

suffer from 遭受

one in four children 四分之一的孩子

decline by 降低了……

on the rise 上升

run into 遇见

think of...as 把……认为是……；把……当作……

thanks to 多亏了……

have a better understanding of 对……有更好的了解

in doubt 怀疑

depend on 依靠；依赖于