Talking About Food: Diets and Discipline
| Welcome to the beginning of the Diets and Discipline series. We’re going to talk about food and its effects this week. The entries in this series are:
This entry is available as a Adobe Acrobat file for printing or use in a class.This entry is spoken, so that you can listen to it while you read. (MP3) |
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Too often we review the vocabulary we use to order food in a restaurant or to describe our favorite foods. But when I listen to the native speakers I know, that’s not how they mostly talk about food. They talk about diets and losing—and gaining—weight. (Losing weight is when you go from 100kg to 95kg. Gaining weight is going in the other direction.)
And, I know enough Germans to know that they talk about food the same way that Americans do: how many calories are in the food? How many grams will they gain? Will they have to exercise if they eat a second piece of cake?
Personally, I think that food should be good, and I’ll worry about calories later. But, I know that’s not how most of my students think. So, this week we’re going to be talking about food and weight and discipline.
Tomorrow we’re going to start with definitions of the words ‘diet’ and ‘discipline,’ and you might be surprised to know that both words have two different, but pretty common, definitions that you should know. Then we’ll move into talking about the idea of an ‘indulgence’ and what it means to ‘indulge.’ I’ll tell you this much right now: you can use the word in a lot of contexts, but it’s a good word for talking about diets! Then we’ll cover some vocabulary concerning nutrition and empty calories and we’ll end with a discussion of weight loss strategies and a listening quiz.
It should be a full week, and I hope it’s helpful to you! While you’re waiting for the week to get started, you might want to try some writing practice:
Writing Practice
How would you describe the foods you eat? Do you eat a lot of fast food? A lot of home-cooked meals? Do you think a lot about your food, to make sure you get enough vegetables and fruits and carbohydrates? I’m not looking for a description of your favorite food, or the food you ate yesterday, I’m asking about the foods you eat in general.
Vocabulary
Calorie: How much energy is in a piece of celery? Is it the same amount as is in a portion of ice cream? Of course not! Celery is healthy and ice cream is, well, not. The way we measure the energy of food—and how fat it will make you—is in calories. Scientists have an exact definition of what a calorie is, but all I can tell you is that almost all food has calories and too many of them mean you’ll be fat.
Photo Credit
The photo above is from Flickr. It was taken by ulterior epicure and made available under a Creative Commons license. Thanks to ulterior epicure for making it available!
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