It is easy to make delicious-looking hamburger at home. But would this
hamburger still look delicious after it sat on your kitchen table under very
bright lights for six or seven hours? if someone took a picture or made a video
of this hamburger after the seventh hour, would anyone want to eat it? More
importantly, do you think you could get millions of people to pay money for
this hamburger? These are the questions that fast food companies worry about
when they produce commercials or print ads for their products. Video and photo
shoots often last many hours. The lights that the photographers use can be
extremely hot. These conditions can cause the food to look quite unappealing to
potential consumers. Because of this, the menu items that you see in fast food
commercials are probably not actually edible.Let's use the hamburger as an
example. The first step towards building the commercial hamburger is the bun.
The food stylist--a person employed by the company to make sure the products
look perfect--sorts through hundreds of buns until he or she finds one with no
wrinkles. Next, the stylist carefully rearranges the sesame seeds on the bun
using glue and tweezers for maximum visual appeal. The bun is then sprayed with
a waterproofing solution so that it will no get soggy from contact with other
ingredients, the lights, or the humidity in the room.Next, the food stylist
shapes a meat patty into a perfect circle. Only the outside of the meat gets
cooked-the inside is left raw so that the meat remains moist. The food stylist
then paints the outside of the meat patty with a mixture of oil, molasses, and
brown food coloring. Grill marks are either painted on or seared into the meat
using hot metal skewers.Finally, the food stylist searches through dozens of
tomatoes and heads of lettuce to find the best-looking produce.One leaf of the
crispest lettuce and one center slice of the reddest tomato are selected and
then sprayed with glycerin to keep them looking fresh. So the next time you see
a delectable hamburger in a fast food commercial, remember: you are actually
looking at glue, paint, raw meat , and glycerin. Are you still hungry?
Question:
Something is edible of it
When her grandmother’s health began to deteriorate in the
fall of 1994, Mary would make the drive from Washington, DC to Winchester every
few days.
She hated highway driving, finding it ugly and monotonous. She
preferred to take meandering back roads to her grandmother’s hospital. When she
drove through the rocky town of Harpers Ferry, the beauty of the rough waters
churning at the intersection of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers always
captivated her.
Toward the end of her journey, Mary had to get on highway
81. It was here that she discovered a surprising bit of beauty during one of
her trips. Along the median of the highway, there was a long stretch of
wildflowers. They were thin and delicate and purple, and swayed in the wind as
if whispering poems to each other.
The first time she saw the flowers, Mary was seized by an uncontrollable
urge to pull over on the highway and yank a bunch from the soil. She carried
them into her grandmother’s room when she arrived at the hospital and placed
them in a water pitcher by her bed. For a moment her grandmother seemed more
lucid than usual. She thanked Mary for the flowers, commented on their beauty
and asked where she had gotten them. Mary was overjoyed by the ability of the
flowers to wake something up inside her ailing grandmother.
Afterwards, Mary began carrying scissors in the car during
her trips to visit her grandmother. She would quickly glide onto the shoulder,
jump out of the car, and clip a bunch of flowers. Each time Mary placed the
flowers in the pitcher, her grandmother’s eyes would light up and they would
have a splendid conversation.
One morning in late October, Mary got a call that her
grandmother had taken a turn for the worse. Mary was in such a hurry to get to
her grandmother that she sped past her flower spot. She decided to turn around
head several miles back, and cut a bunch. Mary arrived at the hospital to find her
grandmother very weak and unresponsive. She placed flowers in the pitcher and
sat down. She felt a squeeze on her fingers. It was the last conversation they
had.
Which of the following accurately describe Mary’s
personality?
I Impatient
II Drawn towards beauty
III Loving
