雅思阅读第106套P1:From SunnyD and Pizza to Bread andWaterReading Passage 1
You should spend about 20minutes on Questions 1 - 13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
From SunnyD and Pizza to Bread andWater
A. Another bad week in a bad month for thefood and drink industry. Sunny Delight, formerly the UK’s third largest sellingdrink, is to be taken off the shelves by Asda after plummeting sales, thesupermarket said at the weekend. Yesterday, it was the turn of Northern Foods,makers of biscuits, pies, pizzas and ready meals, to admit that the trend tohealthier food was causing it problems. The company’s chief executive, Pat O’Driscoll,issued its second profits warning in two months as its biscuit sales slumped by12% year on year in January and February, and pastry sates by 11%. Shares fell17% to a five-year low of £1.08p.
B. The National Consumer Council’s foodexpert, Sue Dibb, said the news showed companies would have to change tosurvive. “It looks as though we’ve reached the tipping point on food. Ourresearch showed that two thirds of consumers have made changes to what they eatin the last year. Supermarkets are getting competitive about health. Companiesare having to wake up or lose their customers.” Foods analyst Clive Black, ofShore Capital, said that a “sea change” in eating habits was behind theindustry’s problems. “Anyone who hasn’t realised over recent years that fruitand veg are good and doughnuts and cream cakes are bad must have been living onthe moon,” he said. “But over the past year or so, the penny really seems tohave dropped.”
C. Like other supermarket groups, Asda saidit had seen a marked change in buying patterns in the past year. “Customerswant more natural and authentic products,” Jon Bett, the trading manager forchilled drinks, said. "The market for carbonated drinks has declined 7 to8% in the last year, while the juice market has doubled and water sales havegrown phenomenally.” The trend had been driven by media coverage and the “JamieOliver effect”, he added.
D. The decline of Sunny Delight is matched bythe fall of other soft drinks - two weeks ago, Britvic admitted a “severedecline” in sales of its carbonated drinks, which include Tango, 7UP and Pepsi- although the fate of the SunnyD brand has attracted particular schadenfreude.Sunny Delight burst on to the market in 1998 and reached the league table oftop brands in 1999 by selling itself as a healthy drink, although its originalrecipe was only 5% juice with plenty of sugar and water as well as vegetableoil, thickeners, added vitamins, flavourings, and colourings.
E. The health watchdog the Food Commissionaccused then owners Procter and Gamble of a con for selling it from fridgecabinets. In 1999, paediatrician Duncan Cameron reported a new and alarmingcondition in the medical journals: Sunny Delight Syndrome. A girl of five hadturned bright yellow after drinking five litres a day. She was overdosing onbeta-carotene, the additive used to give the drink its orange colour, and thepigment was being deposited in her skin. The marketing dream turned to anightmare: by coincidence television adverts at the time showed two white snowmenraiding the fridge for SunnyD and turning bright orange. Its collapse was asdramatic as its rise to fame, and Gerber Foods Soft Drinks, which boughtdistribution rights to the brand in 2005, has been unable to reverse itsfortunes despite efforts to reduce the sugar content, change the recipe, andintroduce new variations, including a bright green apple and kiwi flavour.
F. Kath Dalmeny, the Food Commission’ssenior policy adviser, greeted the news of SunnyD’s delisting withsatisfaction. “There is no appetite any more for products that claim to behealthy but have no real nutritional value. Sunny Delight didn’t live up to itsclaims and parents have seen through that kind of marketing.” Gerber Funds SuitDrinks said SunnyD was suffering from an inherited and unjustified imageproblem. The marketing director, Rob Spencer, told The Grocer magazine: “InAsda, two thirds of our sales come from no added sugar versions, which are upby 1% year on year.”
G. But market research figures from thecompany AC Nielsen show that the pressure on Sunny Delight and Northern Foodsis part of a wider trend. Sales of pizzas and frozen foods fell by 9.2% lastyear. Most products seen as unhealthy declined - confectionery by 3.1%/baggedsnacks by 1.2%, and carbonated soft drinks by 1.7% - while those seen ashealthy boomed. Drinking yoghurts were up 51%, juices 15.6%, and water 9.4%.Ethical investment analysts EIRIS recently listed leading food manufacturersaccording to the percentage of turnover derived from products which fall intothe unhealthy category. It said Unilever, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola,McDonald’s, and Cadbury Schweppes had the highest risk of suffering a backlash.
SECTION 1: QUESTIONS 1-13
Questions 1-4
The text has 7 paragraphs (A- G).
Which paragraph contains eachof the following pieces of information?
1 ___________ Most consumers have changed their eating habits over the last year.
2 ___________ The suggestion that parents are more aware of how advertisers try to sellproducts
3 ___________ The ingredients of a once-popular drink
4 ___________ A description of an advertisement
Questions 5-8
Complete the followingsentences using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the text for each gap.
Shops are becoming more 5 _________________ about stocking healthy food and drink products.
Sunny Delight was originallymarketed as a 6 _________________
Gerber Foods Soft Drinks hasthe 7 _________________ for Sunny Delight.
The most dramatic change inconsumption has been for 8_________________
Questions 9-13
Do the following statementsagree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 9 -13 on youranswer sheet, write
TRUE
if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE
if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN
If there is no information on this
9 _________________ Most of the foods produced by Northern Foods are healthy.
10 _________________ Duncan Cameron is a doctor.
11 _________________ Rob Spencer works for Asda.
12 _________________ Sales of Coca-Cola are declining in Britain.
13 _________________ Fast food companies are looking to developing countries toincrease their profits.
