Karenand Ken Mullin, a young professional couple in Cleveland, own fifty cookbooks and two fully equipped kitchens in their house. Yet they rarely cook their own meals; instead, on their way home from work they usually stop at a supermarket and choose two portions of meat loaf and a container of ready-to-serve potatoes. "My job," says Karen, "is to pour the salad from the bag."
A half-century after the first TV dinner was born, the food industry is approaching its long-sought dream of relieving people like the Mullins of unpaid labor in the final, and arguably most profitable, step by which a cow gets turned into meat loaf. Increasingly, tables in America's kitchens are used not for cutting or peeling but for putting takeout food onto plates. For those who even bother with plates. According to Harry Balzar, an influential food-industry researcher, American dinners that came from a takeout counter increased by 24 percent in the past decade. "We thought the microwave would bea cooking device," says Harry Balzer, "but we find it reheating takeout pizza."
A cross the United States, entire business models are being transformed. Supermarket takeout counters, formerly a place where unsold chickens were coated with sauce, increasingly resemble high-end corporate cafeterias, with sushi bars andstir-fry stations.
One psychologist thinks the trend toward healthier eating is responsible; Americans have finally gotten the message that it's bad to eat fried chicken, so they'redoing it at home where no one can see them.
Of course, there are people you wouldn't expect to cook at home, like SteveTraxler, an unmarried Chicago theater producer, whose refrigerator containslittle more than orange juice, wine and leftovers.
Well,somebody must be using those cookbooks, right? "People don't have time to cook;I think they're reading them in bed," says Rozanne Gold, author of a cookbook.
It's not entirely a question of time. The takeout fashion is fueled, in part, by thepopularity of foods like sushi, which even adventuresome American cooks areunlikely to try to make at home. And takeout fills another need as well, forthe atmosphere of the home-cooked dinner.
1. From thetext we can learn that the Mullins ____.
[A] are experienced in cooking
[B] are expert at food shopping
[C] often go dining out at a restaurant
[D] often eat ready-made food at home
2. The food industry is approaching its final goal of _____.
[A] freeing people of cooking at home
[B] turning cows into meat loaf for people
[C] relieving itself of unpaid labor for people
[D] providing people with delicious TV dinners
3. We can inferfrom the text that some Americans ____.
[A] are too busy to cut or peel
[B] are too busy to use their tables
[C] do not even use their plates
[D] do not even use the microwave
4. Supermarkettakeout counters ___.
[A] have sushi bars and stir-fry stations now
[B] used to process the left-over food for sale
[C] cooperate with high-end corporation cafeterias
[D] used to coat chickens of inferior quality with sauce
5. Takeout food is not only convenient but also enables Americans to ____.
[A] avoid taking unhealthy food
[B] follow the trend of eating out
[C] enjoy eating together at home
[D] have time to improve their cooking.
