Reading: Nutrition and Ultra-Processed Foods
Diet, nutrition and ultra-processed food
Answers and an explanation for each question appear once you add this activity to your own library.
How to use this lesson
👨🏫 For the Teacher
Guide students through the reading passage and set an 18-minute timer for the ten questions.
Check the answers together and discuss how the author softens claims with words like seems and suggests.
👩🎓 For the Learner
First, read the title and skim paragraphs A to D to see how the numbers connect together.
Next, work through each question carefully and confirm every single answer with the exact words from the text.
Diets, Numbers and Processed Food
According to the World Health Organization, everyone older than 10 should eat at least 400 g of fruit and vegetables a day. In the UK, the National Health Service promotes this goal through its "5 A Day" advice. Under this guidance, one portion is defined as 80 g of fresh, canned or frozen fruit or vegetables.
The World Health Organization also gives clear numeric targets for other parts of the daily diet. For adults, the organization recommends keeping daily salt intake below 5 g a day. In addition, free sugars, which are sugars added to food and drinks, should make up under 10% of the energy people take in each day.
In 2019, the US National Institutes of Health carried out a study on ultra-processed food. Researchers observed 20 adult volunteers for a month, placing them on an ultra-processed diet for 2 weeks and on an unprocessed diet for 2 weeks. On the ultra-processed diet, participants consumed about 500 more calories a day and gained 0.9 kg, or 2 pounds, on average. However, this was a small study.
These facts seem to show that health advice can be given as clear numbers, and I think the NIH study suggests that the kind of food can change how much people eat. Still, the facts here do not show how ultra-processed food affects people over many years.
Questions 1–3
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in the reading passage?
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
1. The writer believes that official dietary advice can be successfully expressed as specific numerical targets.
2. The findings of the 2019 study reveal how ultra-processed foods impact human health over several decades.
3. Most adults find it significantly harder to limit their sugar intake than to restrict their salt intake.
Questions 4–5
The reading passage has four paragraphs, A–D. Which paragraph contains the following information?
4. the specific quantity that constitutes an individual serving of produce
5. a recorded increase in physical body mass observed during a feeding trial
Questions 6–7
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.
6. What limitation of the 2019 NIH investigation is explicitly acknowledged in the text?
7. What does the writer suggest about the NIH study in paragraph D?
Questions 8–10
Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
Recommended Dietary Targets
Official guidelines from the World Health Organization state that anyone over 10 years of age should consume a minimum of
____of fruit and vegetables each day.
Additionally, mature individuals are instructed to restrict their total daily intake of
____to an amount under 5 g.
Finally, added sweeteners must account for less than
____of the total daily energy that an individual consumes.
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