IELTS Real Reading Test 2026 - Q1 Test 2 with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Luyện tập đề IELTS Real Reading Test 2026 - Q1 Test 2 được lấy từ cuốn sách Real Test 2026 - Q1 với trải nghiệm thi IELTS trên máy và giải thích đáp án chi tiết bằng Linearthinking, kèm answer key và list từ vựng IELTS cần học trong bài đọc.
IELTS Real Reading Test 2026 - Q1 Test 2 with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 1
Question 1 - 5
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
1
According to Darwin, cooking was the most significant development in human history.
2
The process of cooking gets rid of some plant poisons.
3
Eating cooked food is more energy efficient than eating raw food.
4
Clarence Birdseye had previously worked in the Australian food industry.
5
Birdseye's trip with the Inuit confirmed what he already believed about rapid freezing.
Question 6 - 13
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND FOOD PRESERVATION
The changes agriculture brought about were:
- the development of equipment and larger
6.
- the ability to keep
7.
as writing developed
- the setting up of organised government
Food preservation
- early methods of food preservation included: smoking, drying and combining food with acid or
8.
- canning
• Nicholas Appert put food into containers made of
9.
.
• Appert’s method resulted in preserved food that had the same taste and
10.
as fresh food.
• Peter Durand introduced cans which had the advantage of being
11.
and hard to break.
• In 1855, the metal can opener replaced the
12.
which had been used with a hammer to open cans.
• some food was still found to be edible after more than a hundred years, e.g. an old can of
13.
- freezing
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 2
Question 14 - 20
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
14
The term ‘biodiversity’ consists of living creatures and the environment that they live in.
15
There are species that have not been researched because it’s unnecessary to study all creatures.
16
It is not necessary to investigate all creatures in a certain place.
17
The press often focuses more on animals that are well-known.
18
There is a successful case that cactus moth plays a positive role in the US.
19
Usage of hardwoods is forbidden in some European countries.
20
Agriculture experts advise farmers to plant single crops in the field in terms of sustainable farming.
Question 21 - 26
Complete the notes below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Because of the ignorance brought by media, people tend to neglect significant creatures called
21.
. Every creature has diet connections with others, such as
22.
, which provide a majority of foods for other species. In some states of America, the decline in a number of sea otters leads to the boom of
23.
. An impressive case is that imported
24.
successfully tackles the plant cacti in
25.
. However, the operation is needed for the government to increase its financial support in
26.
.
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 3
Question 27 - 32
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In following statements below, choose
YES if the statement agrees with the information
NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
27
The Grimm brothers believed they would achieve international fame.
28
The Grimm brothers were forced to work in secret.
29
Some parents today still think Grimm’s fairy tales are not suitable for children.
30
The first edition of Grimm’s fairy tales sold more widely in England than in Germany.
31
Adults like reading Grimm’s fairy tales for reasons different from those of children.
32
The Grimm brothers based the story ‘Cinderella’ on the life of Dorothea Viehmann.
Question 33 - 35
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes on your answer sheet.
33
In paragraph 4, what changes happened at that time in Europe?
A
Literacy levels of the population increased.
B
The development of printing technology made it easier to publish.
C
Schools were open to children.
D
People were fond of collecting superb picture books.
34
What changes did the Grimm Brothers make in later editions?
A
They made the stories shorter.
B
They used more oral language.
C
The content of the tales became less violent.
D
They found other origins of the tales.
35
What did Marie Hassenpflug contribute to the Grimm’s Fairy tales?
A
She wrote stories.
B
She discussed the stories with them.
C
She translated a popular book for the brothers using her talent for languages.
D
She told the oral stories that were based on traditional Italian stories.
Question 36 - 40
Complete each of the following statements with the best ending A-H from the box below.
List of Endings
A
reflect what life was like at that time
B
help children deal with their problems
C
demonstrate the outdated system
D
tell of the simplicity of life in the German countryside
E
encourage people to believe that they can do anything
F
recognize the heroes in the real life
G
contribute to the belief in nature power
H
avoid details about characters’ social settings
Heinz Rolleke said the Grimm’s tales are ‘German’ because the tales
36
Heinz Rolleke said the abandoned children in tales
37
Bernhard Lauer said the writing style of the Grimm brothers is universal because they
38
Jack Zipes said the pursuit of happiness in the tales means they
39
Bruno Bettelheim said the therapeutic value of the tales means that the fairy tales
40
DOL IELTS Đình Lực
05/05/2026
📖 Bài đọc passage 1
A brief history of humans and food
During the journey from our hunter-gatherer ancestors to the present day there have been three seismic changes that have had an impact on the food we eat: the discovery of cooking, the emergence of agriculture and the invention of methods of preserving food.
The 19th-century scientist Charles Darwin thought that cooking, after language, was the greatest discovery made by man. All of us eat some raw food, for instance fruit and vegetables, but the great majority of food we eat is cooked. Cooking can turn plants that are inedible into edible food by destroying toxic chemicals that plants often manufacture to protect themselves against attack by insects or other herbivorous animals. These toxic chemicals are referred to as ‘plant secondary compounds’, because they are not directly involved in the plant’s normal growth, development and reproduction, and are produced purely as chemical defences. They give many of the plants we consume, such as coffee or brussels sprouts, their bitter taste.
Cooked food is often more digestible, because heat breaks down tough cellulose cell walls in plants or tough connective tissue in animals. Chewing raw turnip, a plate of uncooked rice, or a raw leg of lamb is much harder work than eating the cooked equivalent. The energy expended in chewing to break down the tough material is replaced by energy from the fuel that is used in cooking the food, so the ratio of energy gained to energy expended by the body is greater when food is cooked.
Until the development of agriculture, hunter-gatherers spent up to seven hours a day gathering food. This all began to change around 10,500 years ago with the advent of farming, which led to some dramatic changes in human societies. People began to create a variety of new tools to help with survival, and in turn populations increased in size. These changes led to the possibility of specialisation of different tasks within society. It was around this time that writing became more sophisticated and allowed people to maintain records of the harvest and taxes. Eventually, formalised structures of government were established as people settled in one area.
The arrival of agriculture meant that, for the first time, our ancestors had more food than they could eat immediately. This, combined with the seasonality of production, led them to discover methods of preserving food: smoking, drying, adding acid by fermentation or adding salt. These four methods all share one feature in common: they make the food a more hostile environment for bacteria that can cause it to spoil. They also tend to slow down any natural chemical reactions in the food that would cause decay.
Although foods today are still preserved in the ancient ways, two more recent methods of preserving food have become more common: canning and freezing. Canning was invented by a Frenchman, Nicholas Appert, in the early-19th century. He sealed food in bottles fabricated from glass and then heated them in boiling water to cook the contents. Appert’s method had great advantages over older methods of food preservation: it could be applied to a wide range of foods, and the flavour of the food as well as the texture were similar to the freshly cooked product. His idea was soon copied by Englishman, Peter Durand. Until this point containers had weighed too much to be widely used, but he produced the first ones which were light and resistant to damage. Two years later, in 1812, two Englishmen, Bryan Donkin and John Hall, started the commercial canning of food, although the real take-off in popularity of canning had to wait until the can opener was invented in 1855. Up to this time, cans were opened with a chisel which was used to break open the top when hit with a hammer. Canning is an extremely effective way of preserving food: one can which contained meat dating from 1824 was opened in 1939 and the contents were still in good condition.
In the 21st century, the dominance of canning as a method of food preservation has been overtaken by another technology: freezing. Chilling food to keep it fresh is an old idea. The earliest mentions of icehouses, thick-walled buildings, half underground, date back to 1,700BC in northwest Iran. In early 16th-century Italy, water was mixed with chemicals to lower its freezing point to - 18 degrees Celsius, and several centuries later frozen fish and other goods were transported by ship from Australia to England. But the modern frozen food industry was started in the 1920s by an American, Clarence Birdseye. While Birdseye was on a fishing trip with the Inuit in the Canadian Arctic, he observed that very rapid freezing creates smaller ice crystals and therefore causes less damage to food. This was something he had not expected. Nevertheless, the big growth in demand for frozen food came about with the arrival of freezers in the homes of ordinary people. The advantages of frozen over canned food include the fact that the flavour and consistency are often identical to the equivalent fresh product, and that freezing can be used to preserve a huge variety of foods.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 1
1
False
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài True / False / Not Given
Step 01: Read the question to understand (main idea + detail)
Simplified: According to Darwin cooking was the most significant development in human history
-------
Step 02: Locate relevant information
🔍 Từ khoá: “Darwin”, “cooking”, “most significant”
=> Dựa vào các từ khoá trên -> Tìm được trích dẫn ở đoạn 2.
-------
Step 03: Read relevant information to understand (main + detail)
📌 Trích dẫn: “Charles Darwin thought that cooking, after language, was the greatest discovery made by man.”
Simplified: Darwin thought cooking was the greatest discovery after language
Main idea: Cooking = phát minh vĩ đại, nhưng đứng sau language.
-------
Step 04: Compare meaning with meaning
Trong bài đọc: Cooking quan trọng nhưng KHÔNG phải quan trọng nhất; language mới là số 1.
Trong câu hỏi: Cooking = phát minh quan trọng nhất trong lịch sử loài người.
⇒ Hai ý mâu thuẫn -> ✅ Chọn: FALSE
-------
Lưu ý chung:
TRUE nếu Darwin cho rằng cooking là số 1, nhưng bài nói nó đứng sau language.
NOT GIVEN nếu bài không so sánh cooking với phát minh khác, nhưng bài nêu rõ thứ tự: language → cooking.
A. It seems biodiversity has become a buzzword beloved of politicians, conservationists, protesters and scientists alike. But what exactly is it? The Convention on Biological Diversity, an international agreement to conserve and share the planet’s biological riches, provides a good working definition: biodiversity comprises every form of life, from the smallest microbe to the largest animal or plant, the genes that give them their specific characteristics and the ecosystems of which they are apart.
B
In October, the World Conservation Union (also known as the IUCN) published its updated Red List of Threatened Species, a roll call of 11,167 creatures facing extinction – 121 more than when the list was last published in 2000. But the new figures almost certainly underestimate the crisis. Some 1.2 million species of animal and 270,000 species of plant have been classified, but the well-being of only a fraction has been assessed. The resources are simply not available. The IUCN reports that 5714 plants are threatened, for example, but admits that only 4 per cent of known plants has been assessed. And, of course, there are thousands of species that we have yet to discover. Many of these could also be facing extinction.
C
It is important to develop a picture of the diversity of life on Earth now so that comparisons can be made in the future and trends identified. But it isn’t necessary to observe every single type of organism in an area to get a snapshot of the health of the ecosystem. In many habitats, there are species that are particularly susceptible to shifting conditions, and these can be used as indicator species.
D
In the media, it is usually large, charismatic animals such as pandas, elephants, tigers and whales that get all the attention when a loss of biodiversity is discussed. However, animals or plants far lower down the food chain are often the ones vital for preserving habitats – in the process saving the skins of those more glamorous species. There are known as keystone species.
E
By studying the complex feeding relationships within habitats, species can be identified that have a particularly important impact on the environment. For example, the members of the fig family are the staple food for hundreds of different species in many different countries, so important that scientists sometimes call figs ‘jungle burgers’. A whole range of animals, from tiny insects to birds and large mammals, feed on everything from the tree’s bark and leaves to its flowers and fruits. Many fig species have very specific pollinators. There are several dozen species of the fig tree in Costa Rica, and a different type of wasp has evolved to pollinate each one. Chris Lyle of the Natural History Museum in London – who is also involved in the Global Taxonomy Initiative of the Convention on Biological Diversity – points out that if fig trees are affected by global warming, pollution, disease or any other catastrophe, the loss of biodiversity will be enormous.
F
Similarly, sea otters play a major role in the survival of giant kelp forests along the coasts of California and Alaska. These ‘marine rainforests’ provide a home for a wide range of other species. The kelp itself is the main food of purple and red sea urchins and in turn, the urchins are eaten by predators, particularly sea otters. They detach an urchin from the seabed then float to the surface and lie on their backs with the urchin shell on their tummy, smashing it open with a stone before eating the contents. Urchins that are not eaten tend to spend their time in rock crevices to avoid the predators. This allows the kelp to grow – and it can grow many centimetres in a day. As the forests form, bits of kelp break off and fall to the bottom to provide food for the urchins in their crevices. The sea otters thrive hunting for sea urchins in the kelp, and many other fish and invertebrates live among the fronds. The problems start when the sea otter population declines. As large predators they are vulnerable – their numbers are relatively small to disease or human hunters can wipe them out. The result is that the sea urchin population grows unchecked and they roam the seafloor eating young kelp fronds. This tends to keep the kelp very short and stops forests developing, which has a huge impact on biodiversity.
G
Conversely, keystone species can also make dangerous alien species: they can wreak havoc if they end up in the wrong ecosystem. The cactus moth, whose caterpillar is a voracious eater of prickly pear was introduced to Australia to control the rampant cacti. It was so successful that someone thought it would be a good idea to introduce it to Caribbean islands that had the same problem. It solved the cactus menace, but unfortunately, some of the moths have now reached the US mainland – borne on winds and in tourists’ luggage – where they are devastating the native cactus populations of Florida.
H
Organisations like the Convention on Biological Diversity work with groups such as the UN and with governments and scientists to raise awareness and fund research. A number of major international meetings – including the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg this year – have set targets for governments around the world to slow the loss of biodiversity. And the CITES meeting in Santiago last month added several more names to its list of endangered species for which trade is controlled. Of course, these agreements will prove of limited value if some countries refuse to implement them.
I
There is cause for optimism, however. There seems to be a growing understanding of the need for sustainable agriculture and sustainable tourism to conserve biodiversity. Problems such as illegal logging are being tackled through sustainable forestry programmes, with the emphasis on minimising the use of rainforest hardwoods in the developed world and on rigorous replanting of whatever trees are harvested. CITES is playing its part by controlling trade in wood from endangered tree species. In the same way, sustainable farming techniques that minimise environmental damage avoid monoculture.
J
Action at a national level often means investing in public education and awareness. Getting people like you and me involved can be very effective. Australia and many European countries are becoming increasingly efficient at recycling much of their domestic waste, for example, preserving natural resources and reducing the use of fossil fuels. This, in turn, has a direct effect on biodiversity by minimising pollution, and an indirect effect by reducing the number of greenhouse gases emitted from incinerators and landfill sites. Preserving ecosystems intact for future generations to enjoy is obviously important, but biodiversity is not some kind of optional extra. Variety may be ‘the spice of life’, but biological variety is also our life-support system.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 2
14
True
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài True / False / Not Given
Step 01: Read the question to understand (main idea + detail)
Simplified: The term ‘biodiversity’ consists of living creatures and the environment they live in .
-------
Step 02: Locate relevant information
🔍 Từ khóa: “biodiversity”, “living creatures”, “environment”.
=> Dựa vào các từ khoá trên -> Tìm được trích dẫn ở đoạn A.
-------
Step 03: Read relevant information to understand (main + detail)
📌 Trích dẫn: “The Convention on Biological Diversity, an international agreement to conserve and share the planet’s biological riches, provides a good working definition: biodiversity comprises every form of life, from the smallest microbe to the largest animal or plant, the genes that give them their specific characteristics and the ecosystems of which they are a part.”
Simplified: Biodiversity comprises every form of life (microbes → plants & animals), their genes, and the ecosystems they belong to .
Main idea: Đa dạng sinh học bao gồm các sinh vật sống, gen của chúng và hệ sinh thái – tức môi trường sống của chúng.
-------
Step 04: Compare meaning with meaning
Trong bài đọc: Biodiversity gồm sinh vật sống và hệ sinh thái (môi trường sống của chúng).
Trong câu hỏi: Biodiversity gồm sinh vật sống và môi trường chúng sống trong đó.
⇒ Hai ý khớp nhau -> ✅ Chọn: TRUE
-------
Lưu ý:
FALSE → sẽ đúng nếu bài nói biodiversity chỉ gồm sinh vật sống, không gồm môi trường → ❌ sai.
NOT GIVEN → sẽ đúng nếu bài không nhắc đến môi trường sống → ❌ có nhắc rõ “ecosystems of which they are a part.”
The Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, named their story collection Children’s and Household Tales and published the first of its seven editions in Germany in 1812. The table of contents reads like an A-list of fairy-tale celebrities: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, the Frog King. Drawn mostly from oral narratives, the 210 stories in the Grimm’s collection represent an anthology of fairy tales, animal fables, rustic farces, and religious allegories that remain unrivalled to this day.
Such lasting fame would have shocked the humble Grimms. During their lifetimes the collection sold modestly in Germany, at first only a few hundred copies a year. The early editions were not even aimed at children. The brothers initially refused to consider illustrations, and scholarly footnotes took up almost as much space as the tales themselves. Jacob and Wilhelm viewed themselves as patriotic folklorists, not as entertainers of children. They began their work at a time when Germany had been overrun by the French under Napoleon, who were intent on suppressing local culture. As young, workaholic scholars, single and sharing a cramped flat, the Brothers Grimm undertook the fairy-tale collection with the goal of saving the endangered oral tradition of Germany.
For much of the 19th century teachers, parents, and religious figures, particularly in the United States, deplored the Grimms’ collection for its raw, uncivilized content. Offended adults objected to the gruesome punishments inflicted on the stories’ villains. In the original ‘Snow White’ the evil stepmother is forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she falls down dead. Even today some protective parents shy from the Grimms’ tales because of their reputation for violence.
Despite its sometimes rocky reception, Children’s and Household Tales gradually took root with the public. The brothers had not foreseen that the appearance of their work would coincide with a great flowering of children’s literature in Europe. English publishers led the way, issuing high-quality picture books such as Jack and the Beanstalk and handsome folktale collections, all to satisfy a newly literate audience seeking virtuous material for the nursery. Once the Brothers Grimm sighted this new public, they set about refining and softening their tales, which had originated centuries earlier as earthy peasant fare. In the Grimms’ hands, cruel mothers became nasty stepmothers, unmarried lovers were made chaste, and the incestuous father was recast as the devil.
In the 20th century the Grimms’ fairy tales have come to rule the bookshelves of children’s bedrooms. The stories read like dreams come true: handsome lads and beautiful damsels, armed with magic, triumph over giants and witches and wild beasts. They outwit mean, selfish adults. Inevitably the boy and girl fall in love and live happily ever after. And parents keep reading because they approve of the finger-wagging lessons inserted into the stories: keep your promises, don’t talk to strangers, work hard, obey your parents. According to the Grimms, the collection served as ‘a manual of manners’.
Altogether some 40 persons delivered tales to the Grimms. Many of the storytellers came to the Grimms’ house in Kassel. The brothers particularly welcomed the visits of Dorothea Viehmann, a widow who walked to town to sell produce from her garden. An innkeeper’s daughter, Viehmann had grown up listening to stories from travellers on the road to Frankfurt. Among her treasures was ‘Aschenputtel’—Cinderella. Marie Hassenpflug was a 20-year-old friend of their sister, Charlotte, from a well-bred, French-speaking family. Marie’s wonderful stories blended motifs from the oral tradition and from Perrault’s influential 1697 book, Tales of My Mother Goose, which contained elaborate versions of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, ‘Snow White’, and ‘Sleeping Beauty’, among others. Many of these had been adapted from earlier Italian fairy tales.
Given that the origins of many of the Grimm fairy tales reach throughout Europe and into the Middle East and Orient, the question must be asked: How German are the Grimm tales? Very, says scholar Heinz Rolleke. Love of the underdog, rustic simplicity, creative energy — these are Teutonic traits. The coarse texture of life during medieval times in Germany, when many of the tales entered the oral tradition, also coloured the narratives. Throughout Europe children were often neglected and abandoned, like Hansel and Gretel. Accused witches were burned at the stake, like the evil mother-in-law in ‘The Six Swans.’ ‘The cruelty in the stories was not the Grimms’ fantasy’, Rolleke points out. ‘It reflected the law-and-order system of the old times.’
The editorial fingerprints left by the Grimms betray the specific values of 19th-century Christian, bourgeois German society. But that has not stopped the tales from being embraced by almost every culture and nationality in the world. What accounts for this widespread, enduring popularity? Bernhard Lauer points to the ‘universal style’ of the writing. ‘You have no concrete descriptions of the land, or the clothes, or the forest, or the castles. It makes the stories timeless and placeless.’ ‘The tales allow us to express ‘our utopian longings’,’ says lack Zipes of the University of Minnesota, whose 1987 translation of the complete fairy tales captures the rustic vigour of the original text. ‘They show a striving for happiness that none of us knows but that we sense is possible. We can identify with the heroes of the tales and become in our mind the masters and mistresses of our own destinies.’
Fairy tales provide a workout for the unconscious, psychoanalysts maintain. Bruno Bettelheim famously promoted the therapeutic value of the Grimms’ stories, calling fairy tales the ‘great comforters’. By confronting fears and phobias, symbolized by witches, heartless stepmothers, and hungry wolves, children find they can master their anxieties. Bettelheim’s theory continues to be hotly debated. But most young readers aren’t interested in exercising their unconsciousness. The Grimm tales in fact please in an infinite number of ways. Something about them seems to mirror whatever moods or interests we bring to our reading of them. This flexibility of interpretation suits them for almost any time and any culture.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 3
27
No
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài Yes / No / Not Given
Step 01: Read the question to understand (main idea + detail)
Simplified: The Grimm brothers believed they would achieve international fame
Main idea: Hai anh em Grimm tin rằng tác phẩm của họ sẽ nổi tiếng trên toàn thế giới → họ kỳ vọng sẽ đạt được danh tiếng quốc tế.
-------
Step 02: Locate relevant information
🔍 Từ khóa: “Grimm brothers”, “believed”, “international fame”
→ Dựa vào các từ khoá trên → Tìm được trích dẫn ở đoạn 2
-------
Step 03: Read relevant information to understand (main + detail)
📌 Trích dẫn: “Such lasting fame would have shocked the humble Grimms.” (Đoạn 2)
Simplified: Such lasting fame would have shocked the humble Grimms
Main idea: Sự nổi tiếng lâu dài của họ khiến anh em Grimm kinh ngạc → họ không hề mong đợi hay tin rằng mình sẽ nổi tiếng đến vậy.
-------
Step 04: Compare meaning with meaning
Trong bài đọc: Anh em Grimm không mong đợi hoặc không tin rằng họ sẽ trở nên nổi tiếng.
Trong câu hỏi: Anh em Grimm tin rằng họ sẽ đạt được danh tiếng quốc tế.
⇒ ✅ Chọn: NO
Giải thích:
Nếu đáp án là YES → bài đọc phải nói rằng họ tin hoặc kỳ vọng mình sẽ nổi tiếng, nhưng thực tế ngược lại.
Nếu đáp án là NOT GIVEN → bài đọc không đề cập gì đến việc họ có tin hay không, nhưng ở đây có nói rõ rằng họ bị sốc vì sự nổi tiếng, chứng tỏ họ không tin điều đó → loại NOT GIVEN.
During the journey from our hunter-gatherer ancestors to the present day there have been three seismic changes that have had an impact on the food we eat: the discovery of cooking, the emergence of agriculture and the invention of methods of preserving food.
The 19th-century scientist Charles Darwin thought that cooking, after language, was the greatest discovery made by man. All of us eat some raw food, for instance fruit and vegetables, but the great majority of food we eat is cooked. Cooking can turn plants that are inedible into edible food by destroying toxic chemicals that plants often manufacture to protect themselves against attack by insects or other herbivorous animals. These toxic chemicals are referred to as ‘plant secondary compounds’, because they are not directly involved in the plant’s normal growth, development and reproduction, and are produced purely as chemical defences. They give many of the plants we consume, such as coffee or brussels sprouts, their bitter taste.
Cooked food is often more digestible, because heat breaks down tough cellulose cell walls in plants or tough connective tissue in animals. Chewing raw turnip, a plate of uncooked rice, or a raw leg of lamb is much harder work than eating the cooked equivalent. The energy expended in chewing to break down the tough material is replaced by energy from the fuel that is used in cooking the food, so the ratio of energy gained to energy expended by the body is greater when food is cooked.
Until the development of agriculture, hunter-gatherers spent up to seven hours a day gathering food. This all began to change around 10,500 years ago with the advent of farming, which led to some dramatic changes in human societies. People began to create a variety of new tools to help with survival, and in turn populations increased in size. These changes led to the possibility of specialisation of different tasks within society. It was around this time that writing became more sophisticated and allowed people to maintain records of the harvest and taxes. Eventually, formalised structures of government were established as people settled in one area.
The arrival of agriculture meant that, for the first time, our ancestors had more food than they could eat immediately. This, combined with the seasonality of production, led them to discover methods of preserving food: smoking, drying, adding acid by fermentation or adding salt. These four methods all share one feature in common: they make the food a more hostile environment for bacteria that can cause it to spoil. They also tend to slow down any natural chemical reactions in the food that would cause decay.
Although foods today are still preserved in the ancient ways, two more recent methods of preserving food have become more common: canning and freezing. Canning was invented by a Frenchman, Nicholas Appert, in the early-19th century. He sealed food in bottles fabricated from glass and then heated them in boiling water to cook the contents. Appert’s method had great advantages over older methods of food preservation: it could be applied to a wide range of foods, and the flavour of the food as well as the texture were similar to the freshly cooked product. His idea was soon copied by Englishman, Peter Durand. Until this point containers had weighed too much to be widely used, but he produced the first ones which were light and resistant to damage. Two years later, in 1812, two Englishmen, Bryan Donkin and John Hall, started the commercial canning of food, although the real take-off in popularity of canning had to wait until the can opener was invented in 1855. Up to this time, cans were opened with a chisel which was used to break open the top when hit with a hammer. Canning is an extremely effective way of preserving food: one can which contained meat dating from 1824 was opened in 1939 and the contents were still in good condition.
In the 21st century, the dominance of canning as a method of food preservation has been overtaken by another technology: freezing. Chilling food to keep it fresh is an old idea. The earliest mentions of icehouses, thick-walled buildings, half underground, date back to 1,700BC in northwest Iran. In early 16th-century Italy, water was mixed with chemicals to lower its freezing point to - 18 degrees Celsius, and several centuries later frozen fish and other goods were transported by ship from Australia to England. But the modern frozen food industry was started in the 1920s by an American, Clarence Birdseye. While Birdseye was on a fishing trip with the Inuit in the Canadian Arctic, he observed that very rapid freezing creates smaller ice crystals and therefore causes less damage to food. This was something he had not expected. Nevertheless, the big growth in demand for frozen food came about with the arrival of freezers in the homes of ordinary people. The advantages of frozen over canned food include the fact that the flavour and consistency are often identical to the equivalent fresh product, and that freezing can be used to preserve a huge variety of foods.
the greatest discovery after language
Main idea: Cooking = phát minh vĩ đại, nhưng đứng sau language.
B. In October, the World Conservation Union (also known as the IUCN) published its updated Red List of Threatened Species, a roll call of 11,167 creatures facing extinction – 121 more than when the list was last published in 2000. But the new figures almost certainly underestimate the crisis. Some 1.2 million species of animal and 270,000 species of plant have been classified, but the well-being of only a fraction has been assessed. The resources are simply not available. The IUCN reports that 5714 plants are threatened, for example, but admits that only 4 per cent of known plants has been assessed. And, of course, there are thousands of species that we have yet to discover. Many of these could also be facing extinction.
C. It is important to develop a picture of the diversity of life on Earth now so that comparisons can be made in the future and trends identified. But it isn’t necessary to observe every single type of organism in an area to get a snapshot of the health of the ecosystem. In many habitats, there are species that are particularly susceptible to shifting conditions, and these can be used as indicator species.
D. In the media, it is usually large, charismatic animals such as pandas, elephants, tigers and whales that get all the attention when a loss of biodiversity is discussed. However, animals or plants far lower down the food chain are often the ones vital for preserving habitats – in the process saving the skins of those more glamorous species. There are known as keystone species.
E. By studying the complex feeding relationships within habitats, species can be identified that have a particularly important impact on the environment. For example, the members of the fig family are the staple food for hundreds of different species in many different countries, so important that scientists sometimes call figs ‘jungle burgers’. A whole range of animals, from tiny insects to birds and large mammals, feed on everything from the tree’s bark and leaves to its flowers and fruits. Many fig species have very specific pollinators. There are several dozen species of the fig tree in Costa Rica, and a different type of wasp has evolved to pollinate each one. Chris Lyle of the Natural History Museum in London – who is also involved in the Global Taxonomy Initiative of the Convention on Biological Diversity – points out that if fig trees are affected by global warming, pollution, disease or any other catastrophe, the loss of biodiversity will be enormous.
F. Similarly, sea otters play a major role in the survival of giant kelp forests along the coasts of California and Alaska. These ‘marine rainforests’ provide a home for a wide range of other species. The kelp itself is the main food of purple and red sea urchins and in turn, the urchins are eaten by predators, particularly sea otters. They detach an urchin from the seabed then float to the surface and lie on their backs with the urchin shell on their tummy, smashing it open with a stone before eating the contents. Urchins that are not eaten tend to spend their time in rock crevices to avoid the predators. This allows the kelp to grow – and it can grow many centimetres in a day. As the forests form, bits of kelp break off and fall to the bottom to provide food for the urchins in their crevices. The sea otters thrive hunting for sea urchins in the kelp, and many other fish and invertebrates live among the fronds. The problems start when the sea otter population declines. As large predators they are vulnerable – their numbers are relatively small to disease or human hunters can wipe them out. The result is that the sea urchin population grows unchecked and they roam the seafloor eating young kelp fronds. This tends to keep the kelp very short and stops forests developing, which has a huge impact on biodiversity.
G. Conversely, keystone species can also make dangerous alien species: they can wreak havoc if they end up in the wrong ecosystem. The cactus moth, whose caterpillar is a voracious eater of prickly pear was introduced to Australia to control the rampant cacti. It was so successful that someone thought it would be a good idea to introduce it to Caribbean islands that had the same problem. It solved the cactus menace, but unfortunately, some of the moths have now reached the US mainland – borne on winds and in tourists’ luggage – where they are devastating the native cactus populations of Florida.
H. Organisations like the Convention on Biological Diversity work with groups such as the UN and with governments and scientists to raise awareness and fund research. A number of major international meetings – including the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg this year – have set targets for governments around the world to slow the loss of biodiversity. And the CITES meeting in Santiago last month added several more names to its list of endangered species for which trade is controlled. Of course, these agreements will prove of limited value if some countries refuse to implement them.
I. There is cause for optimism, however. There seems to be a growing understanding of the need for sustainable agriculture and sustainable tourism to conserve biodiversity. Problems such as illegal logging are being tackled through sustainable forestry programmes, with the emphasis on minimising the use of rainforest hardwoods in the developed world and on rigorous replanting of whatever trees are harvested. CITES is playing its part by controlling trade in wood from endangered tree species. In the same way, sustainable farming techniques that minimise environmental damage avoid monoculture.
J. Action at a national level often means investing in public education and awareness. Getting people like you and me involved can be very effective. Australia and many European countries are becoming increasingly efficient at recycling much of their domestic waste, for example, preserving natural resources and reducing the use of fossil fuels. This, in turn, has a direct effect on biodiversity by minimising pollution, and an indirect effect by reducing the number of greenhouse gases emitted from incinerators and landfill sites. Preserving ecosystems intact for future generations to enjoy is obviously important, but biodiversity is not some kind of optional extra. Variety may be ‘the spice of life’, but biological variety is also our life-support system.
their genes,
and the ecosystems they belong to
The Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, named their story collection Children’s and Household Tales and published the first of its seven editions in Germany in 1812. The table of contents reads like an A-list of fairy-tale celebrities: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, the Frog King. Drawn mostly from oral narratives, the 210 stories in the Grimm’s collection represent an anthology of fairy tales, animal fables, rustic farces, and religious allegories that remain unrivalled to this day.
Such lasting fame would have shocked the humble Grimms. During their lifetimes the collection sold modestly in Germany, at first only a few hundred copies a year. The early editions were not even aimed at children. The brothers initially refused to consider illustrations, and scholarly footnotes took up almost as much space as the tales themselves. Jacob and Wilhelm viewed themselves as patriotic folklorists, not as entertainers of children. They began their work at a time when Germany had been overrun by the French under Napoleon, who were intent on suppressing local culture. As young, workaholic scholars, single and sharing a cramped flat, the Brothers Grimm undertook the fairy-tale collection with the goal of saving the endangered oral tradition of Germany.
For much of the 19th century teachers, parents, and religious figures, particularly in the United States, deplored the Grimms’ collection for its raw, uncivilized content. Offended adults objected to the gruesome punishments inflicted on the stories’ villains. In the original ‘Snow White’ the evil stepmother is forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she falls down dead. Even today some protective parents shy from the Grimms’ tales because of their reputation for violence.
Despite its sometimes rocky reception, Children’s and Household Tales gradually took root with the public. The brothers had not foreseen that the appearance of their work would coincide with a great flowering of children’s literature in Europe. English publishers led the way, issuing high-quality picture books such as Jack and the Beanstalk and handsome folktale collections, all to satisfy a newly literate audience seeking virtuous material for the nursery. Once the Brothers Grimm sighted this new public, they set about refining and softening their tales, which had originated centuries earlier as earthy peasant fare. In the Grimms’ hands, cruel mothers became nasty stepmothers, unmarried lovers were made chaste, and the incestuous father was recast as the devil.
In the 20th century the Grimms’ fairy tales have come to rule the bookshelves of children’s bedrooms. The stories read like dreams come true: handsome lads and beautiful damsels, armed with magic, triumph over giants and witches and wild beasts. They outwit mean, selfish adults. Inevitably the boy and girl fall in love and live happily ever after. And parents keep reading because they approve of the finger-wagging lessons inserted into the stories: keep your promises, don’t talk to strangers, work hard, obey your parents. According to the Grimms, the collection served as ‘a manual of manners’.
Altogether some 40 persons delivered tales to the Grimms. Many of the storytellers came to the Grimms’ house in Kassel. The brothers particularly welcomed the visits of Dorothea Viehmann, a widow who walked to town to sell produce from her garden. An innkeeper’s daughter, Viehmann had grown up listening to stories from travellers on the road to Frankfurt. Among her treasures was ‘Aschenputtel’—Cinderella. Marie Hassenpflug was a 20-year-old friend of their sister, Charlotte, from a well-bred, French-speaking family. Marie’s wonderful stories blended motifs from the oral tradition and from Perrault’s influential 1697 book, Tales of My Mother Goose, which contained elaborate versions of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, ‘Snow White’, and ‘Sleeping Beauty’, among others. Many of these had been adapted from earlier Italian fairy tales.
Given that the origins of many of the Grimm fairy tales reach throughout Europe and into the Middle East and Orient, the question must be asked: How German are the Grimm tales? Very, says scholar Heinz Rolleke. Love of the underdog, rustic simplicity, creative energy — these are Teutonic traits. The coarse texture of life during medieval times in Germany, when many of the tales entered the oral tradition, also coloured the narratives. Throughout Europe children were often neglected and abandoned, like Hansel and Gretel. Accused witches were burned at the stake, like the evil mother-in-law in ‘The Six Swans.’ ‘The cruelty in the stories was not the Grimms’ fantasy’, Rolleke points out. ‘It reflected the law-and-order system of the old times.’
The editorial fingerprints left by the Grimms betray the specific values of 19th-century Christian, bourgeois German society. But that has not stopped the tales from being embraced by almost every culture and nationality in the world. What accounts for this widespread, enduring popularity? Bernhard Lauer points to the ‘universal style’ of the writing. ‘You have no concrete descriptions of the land, or the clothes, or the forest, or the castles. It makes the stories timeless and placeless.’ ‘The tales allow us to express ‘our utopian longings’,’ says lack Zipes of the University of Minnesota, whose 1987 translation of the complete fairy tales captures the rustic vigour of the original text. ‘They show a striving for happiness that none of us knows but that we sense is possible. We can identify with the heroes of the tales and become in our mind the masters and mistresses of our own destinies.’
Fairy tales provide a workout for the unconscious, psychoanalysts maintain. Bruno Bettelheim famously promoted the therapeutic value of the Grimms’ stories, calling fairy tales the ‘great comforters’. By confronting fears and phobias, symbolized by witches, heartless stepmothers, and hungry wolves, children find they can master their anxieties. Bettelheim’s theory continues to be hotly debated. But most young readers aren’t interested in exercising their unconsciousness. The Grimm tales in fact please in an infinite number of ways. Something about them seems to mirror whatever moods or interests we bring to our reading of them. This flexibility of interpretation suits them for almost any time and any culture.
Such lasting fame
would have shocked
the humble Grimms
Main idea: Sự nổi tiếng lâu dài của họ khiến anh em Grimm kinh ngạc → họ không hề mong đợi hay tin rằng mình sẽ nổi tiếng đến vậy.
The Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, named their story collection Children’s and Household Tales and published the first of its seven editions in Germany in 1812. The table of contents reads like an A-list of fairy-tale celebrities: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, the Frog King. Drawn mostly from oral narratives, the 210 stories in the Grimm’s collection represent an anthology of fairy tales, animal fables, rustic farces, and religious allegories that remain unrivalled to this day.
Such lasting fame would have shocked the humble Grimms. During their lifetimes the collection sold modestly in Germany, at first only a few hundred copies a year. The early editions were not even aimed at children. The brothers initially refused to consider illustrations, and scholarly footnotes took up almost as much space as the tales themselves. Jacob and Wilhelm viewed themselves as patriotic folklorists, not as entertainers of children. They began their work at a time when Germany had been overrun by the French under Napoleon, who were intent on suppressing local culture. As young, workaholic scholars, single and sharing a cramped flat, the Brothers Grimm undertook the fairy-tale collection with the goal of saving the endangered oral tradition of Germany.
For much of the 19th century teachers, parents, and religious figures, particularly in the United States, deplored the Grimms’ collection for its raw, uncivilized content. Offended adults objected to the gruesome punishments inflicted on the stories’ villains. In the original ‘Snow White’ the evil stepmother is forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she falls down dead. Even today some protective parents shy from the Grimms’ tales because of their reputation for violence.
Despite its sometimes rocky reception, Children’s and Household Tales gradually took root with the public. The brothers had not foreseen that the appearance of their work would coincide with a great flowering of children’s literature in Europe. English publishers led the way, issuing high-quality picture books such as Jack and the Beanstalk and handsome folktale collections, all to satisfy a newly literate audience seeking virtuous material for the nursery. Once the Brothers Grimm sighted this new public, they set about refining and softening their tales, which had originated centuries earlier as earthy peasant fare. In the Grimms’ hands, cruel mothers became nasty stepmothers, unmarried lovers were made chaste, and the incestuous father was recast as the devil.
In the 20th century the Grimms’ fairy tales have come to rule the bookshelves of children’s bedrooms. The stories read like dreams come true: handsome lads and beautiful damsels, armed with magic, triumph over giants and witches and wild beasts. They outwit mean, selfish adults. Inevitably the boy and girl fall in love and live happily ever after. And parents keep reading because they approve of the finger-wagging lessons inserted into the stories: keep your promises, don’t talk to strangers, work hard, obey your parents. According to the Grimms, the collection served as ‘a manual of manners’.
Altogether some 40 persons delivered tales to the Grimms. Many of the storytellers came to the Grimms’ house in Kassel. The brothers particularly welcomed the visits of Dorothea Viehmann, a widow who walked to town to sell produce from her garden. An innkeeper’s daughter, Viehmann had grown up listening to stories from travellers on the road to Frankfurt. Among her treasures was ‘Aschenputtel’—Cinderella. Marie Hassenpflug was a 20-year-old friend of their sister, Charlotte, from a well-bred, French-speaking family. Marie’s wonderful stories blended motifs from the oral tradition and from Perrault’s influential 1697 book, Tales of My Mother Goose, which contained elaborate versions of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, ‘Snow White’, and ‘Sleeping Beauty’, among others. Many of these had been adapted from earlier Italian fairy tales.
Given that the origins of many of the Grimm fairy tales reach throughout Europe and into the Middle East and Orient, the question must be asked: How German are the Grimm tales? Very, says scholar Heinz Rolleke. Love of the underdog, rustic simplicity, creative energy — these are Teutonic traits. The coarse texture of life during medieval times in Germany, when many of the tales entered the oral tradition, also coloured the narratives. Throughout Europe children were often neglected and abandoned, like Hansel and Gretel. Accused witches were burned at the stake, like the evil mother-in-law in ‘The Six Swans.’ ‘The cruelty in the stories was not the Grimms’ fantasy’, Rolleke points out. ‘It reflected the law-and-order system of the old times.’
The editorial fingerprints left by the Grimms betray the specific values of 19th-century Christian, bourgeois German society. But that has not stopped the tales from being embraced by almost every culture and nationality in the world. What accounts for this widespread, enduring popularity? Bernhard Lauer points to the ‘universal style’ of the writing. ‘You have no concrete descriptions of the land, or the clothes, or the forest, or the castles. It makes the stories timeless and placeless.’ ‘The tales allow us to express ‘our utopian longings’,’ says lack Zipes of the University of Minnesota, whose 1987 translation of the complete fairy tales captures the rustic vigour of the original text. ‘They show a striving for happiness that none of us knows but that we sense is possible. We can identify with the heroes of the tales and become in our mind the masters and mistresses of our own destinies.’
Fairy tales provide a workout for the unconscious, psychoanalysts maintain. Bruno Bettelheim famously promoted the therapeutic value of the Grimms’ stories, calling fairy tales the ‘great comforters’. By confronting fears and phobias, symbolized by witches, heartless stepmothers, and hungry wolves, children find they can master their anxieties. Bettelheim’s theory continues to be hotly debated. But most young readers aren’t interested in exercising their unconsciousness. The Grimm tales in fact please in an infinite number of ways. Something about them seems to mirror whatever moods or interests we bring to our reading of them. This flexibility of interpretation suits them for almost any time and any culture.
