饑餓的大陸

重慶 李 娟

受營養不良的影響，非洲的孩子們正飽受發育遲緩的困擾。

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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 （發育遲緩）. 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into a lot of people from rich countries who still think of Africa as a continent of starvation, which in fact is an outdated picture.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 + 賓語+ 賓補”結構意為“使……處于某種狀態”。They were not starving, but they were not getting enough to eat, leaving them years behind in their development. 他們沒有挨餓，但沒有獲得足夠的吃的東西，這讓他們的發育延緩了多年。

2. “so +助動詞+主語”引導肯定的倒裝句，意為“……也是一樣”。Their future depends on it, and so does Africa's. 他們的未來取決于它，非洲的未來也是如此。

Ⅱ. Memorize some text-centered chunks

be shocked to do 很震驚……

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 遇見

think of...as 把……認為是……；把……當作……

thanks to 多虧了……

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

in doubt 懷疑

depend on 依靠；依賴于