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本篇阅读材料过分追求美食享受的孩子是末日标志吗?选自《时代》(原文标题：Are Foodie Kids the Sign of End Times? 2012.4.4)。如果大家觉得比较简单，就当作英语阅读泛读材料了解了解，认识几个新单词或新表达方式也不错。如果大家觉得这些材料理解上有难度，不妨当做挑战自己的拔高训练，希望大家都有进步。 Being a childless misanthrope and everything， it pleased me to see two new books addressing one of my pet peeves： kids and all the things they dont like. Pamela Druckermans best-selling Bringing Up Bb and the forthcoming French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Le Billon both address the bizarrely stilted taste of American children. Weve all been around kids who only like chicken fingers and are so fed nothing else by their unnaturally indulgent helicopter parents. But in these books， particularly Druckermans， we get a long look at one of the most unnatural and disturbing of contemporary beings： the child foodie. Catering to picky kids is a lot of work， Druckerman writes， telling of a mother who makes four breakfasts for four different children， and a father who tells her in reverent tones that his seven-year-old is very particular about textures. Am I the only one who shudders at this kind of thing? Certainly， Im not the first to have noticed it. The existence of child foodies isnt anything especially new; two year ago the Times did an awful piece on Fine Dining Where Strollers Dont Invite Sneers a year ago the New York Post weighed in on Tweezine， or fine cuisine for grade schoolers. In both cases readers retched. But the trend， sadly， wasnt limited to New York： Chicago Magazine called the snooty spawn koodies and forecasted an emerging society of pintsize gourmands. And they arent going away. Earlier this week I read a story in the Daily News about a 12-year-old critic who had just published a restaurant guide to New York. Kid critics are the latest trend; even the normally caustic eater.com has commissioned some. Then one of my friends wrote to tell me about his 8-year-old nephew. Hes such a food snob， he writes， that he wont eat canned or jarred foods. If hes given bottled tomato sauce he spits it out. Now， weve all seen bad kids; theyre even a form of entertainment， in the form of viral videos enjoyed by those of us who dont actually have families. Child foodies arent badbut the precocious displeasure they display towards foods beneath them is most unnatural. Im not against kids enjoying good food， even grown-up food like sushi or goat cheese risotto balls (fed to a two-year old， at one of the best restaurants in Manhattan， in the Times piece.) But being a foodie means having an aroused and rarefied interest in unusual foods; and that， inevitably， means an implicit detestation of regular， crappy foods. I may be the only professional food writer I know who eats Go-Go Taquitos at 7-11 as part of his regular diet; and I would get bounced out of the profession if people knew what I did behind closed doors. I dont want to be the one to suggest that its wrong to encourage prepubescent epicureanism in a country where 46 million people are on food stampsbut it is wrong. I know no kid is moved by warnings that children are starving in Biafra; but they should be aware that children are starving three blocks over. Not to pick on the Times piece， which is both old and ludicrous， but I cant stop thinking of the photograph， of three princelings being waited upon by what appear to be hispanic servers. The image is one with more than a whiff of feudal privilege， in the context of which the childrens choices seem totally gross and un-American. | 
