Why do Americans struggle with watching their weight, while the French, who consume（消耗） rich food, continue to stay thin? Now a research by Cornell University suggests how life style and decisions about eating may affect weight. Researchers concluded that the French tend to（往往，倾向于） stop eating when they feel full. However, Americans tend to stop when their plate is empty or their favorite TV show is over.

    According to Dr. Joseph Mercola, a health expert, the French see eating as an important part of their life style. They enjoy food and therefore spend a fairly long time at the table, while Americans see eating as something to be squeezed（挤出） between the other daily activities. Mercola believes Americans lose the ability to sense when they are actually full. So they keep eating long after the French would have stopped. In addition, he points out that Americans drive to huge supermarkets to buy canned and frozen foods for the week. The French, instead, tend to shop daily, walking to small shops and farmers’ markets where they have a choice of fresh fruits, vegetables, and eggs as well as high-quality meats for each meal.

   After a visit to the United States, Mireille Guiliano, author of French Women Don’t Get Fat, decided to write about the importance of knowing when to stop rather than suggesting how to avoid food. Today she continues to stay slim and rarely goes to the gym.

   In spite of（尽管） all these differences, evidence shows that recent life style changes may be affecting French eating habits. Today the rate of obesity — or  extreme overweight — among adults is only 6%. However, as American fast food gains acceptance and the young reject（拒绝） older traditions, the obesity rate among French children has reached 17% — and is growing.

A．Americans and the French

B．life style and obesity

C．children and adults

D．fast food and overweight

   As Internet users become more dependent on the Internet to store information, are people remember less? If you know your computer will save information, why store it in your own personal memory, your brain? Experts are wondering if the Internet is changing what we remember and how.

In a recent study, Professor Betsy Sparrow conducted some experiments. She and her research team wanted to know the Internet is changing memory. In the first experiment, they gave people 40 unimportant facts to type into a computer. The first group of people understood that the computer would save the information. The second group understood that the computer would not save it. Later, the second group remembered the information better. People in the first group knew they could find the information again, so they did not try to remember it.

In another experiment, the researchers gave people facts to remember, and told them where to find the information an the Internet. The information was in a specific computer folder (文件夹). Surprisingly, people later remember the folder location (位置) better than the facts. When people use the Internet, they do not remember the information. Rather, they remember how to find it. This is called “transactive memory (交互记忆)”

According to Sparrow, we are not becoming people with poor memories as a result of the Internet. Instead, computer users are developing stronger transactive memories; that is, people are learning how to organize huge quantities of information so that they are able to access it at a later date. This doesn’t mean we are becoming either more or less intelligent, but there is no doubt that the way we use memory is changing.

   Since finishing my studies at Harvard and Oxford, I’ve watched one friend after another land high-ranking, high-paying Wall Street jobs. As executives (高级管理人员) with banks, consulting firms, established law firms, and major corporations, many are now ____ on their way to impressive careers. By society’s ____, they seem to have it made.

On the surface, these people seem to be very lucky in life. As they left student life behind, many had a ____ drink at their cheap but friendly local bar, shook hands with longtime roommates, and ____ out of small apartments into high buildings. They made reservations at restaurants where the cost of a bottle of wine ____ a college year’s monthly rent. They replaced their beloved old cars with expensive new sports cars.

The thing is, a number of them have ____ that despite their success, they aren’t happy. Some ____ of unfriendly coworkers and feel sad for eight-hour workweeks devoted to tasks they ____. Some do not respect the companies they work for and talk of feeling tired and ____. However, instead of devoting themselves to their work, they find themselves working to support the ____ to which they have so quickly become ____.

People often speak of trying a more satisfying path, and ____ in the end the idea of leaving their jobs to work for something they ____ or finding a position that would give them more time with their families almost always leads them to the same conclusion: it’s ____. They have loans, bills, a mortgage (抵押贷款) to ____, retirement to save for. They recognize there’s something ____ in their lives, but it’s ____ to step off the track.

In a society that tends to ____ everything in terms of dollars and cents, we learn from a young age to consider the costs of our ____ in financial terms. But what about the personal and social costs ____ in pursuing money over meaning? These are exactly the kinds of costs many of us tend to ignore — and the very ones we need to consider most.