Topic 3: Beef in Fries?

Topic 3: Beef in Fries? r 21
Topic 3: Beef in Fries?
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Hindus believe cows to be holy. It would be as unthinkable for them to eat
beef, as it would be for a cowboy to eat his own horse. Harish Barti, a Hindu
living in America, said, ‘Eating a cow for a Hindu would be like eating your
mother herself.’ Like him many Hindus living in the USA have problems in
mixing their religious habits with the American lifestyle …
Mr Sharma, a Hindu working for Boeing in Seattle, says that before 1990 he
never went to a McDonald’s restaurant. He didn’t eat hamburgers or cheeseburgers as they are made of beef and he didn’t eat French fried potatoes there
as they were cooked in beef fat.
But in 1990 McDonald’s switched from beef fat to “100 % vegetable oil” to
cook its French fries. Now Mr Sharma, like thousands of Hindu Americans,
began going to McDonald’s to eat what they believed were vegetarian fries.
In April 1990 he was shocked when he opened his India West newspaper and
read ‘Where’s the Beef? It’s in your French Fries.’ The newspaper said that
McDonald’s French Fries are seasoned in the factory with beef flavour before
they are sent to the restaurants and cooked in vegetable oil.
Mr Sharma was shocked about the fact that he had eaten ‘beef in fries’. ‘The
mistake wasn’t mine,’ Mr Sharma says. ‘It was theirs. They didn’t tell the truth.
I can’t blame myself.’
Now Mr Sharma is representing the Hindus and vegetarians of America in a
lawsuit that accuses McDonald’s of deliberately misleading its customers.
‘The fault isn’t ours,’ Walt Riker, a spokesman for McDonald’s said in an
interview last week. ‘We certainly don’t market ourselves as vegetarian.’
At the Anand Bhavan Vegetarian restaurant in Houston, Mahendra Jagirdar,
an engineer, said he had stopped eating at McDonald’s when he heard about
the fries. ‘I’m a pretty strict vegetarian myself. You can choose: you can eat at
vegetarian restaurants or you can go to McDonald’s.’
As for Mr Sharma he is looking for ways to clean himself. ‘I am now planning
to go to India to swim in the holy river Ganges. It will make things better, but
the damage is already done.’
22 r Topics and tasks
Vocabulary
beef (heading): Rindf leisch
fries (heading): eigentlich French fried potatoes: Pommes frites
holy (line 1): heilig
unthinkable (line 1): unvorstellbar, undenkbar
religious habits (line 5): religiöse Gewohnheiten
to switch (line 10): hier: (Produktion) umstellen
beef flavour (line 15): Rindf leischaroma, Rindf leischgeschmack
seasoned (line 15): mit Würze, gewürzt
to blame someone (line 19): jemandem die Schuld geben, jemanden verantwortlich machen
to represent s.o. (line 20): hier: jemanden vertreten
lawsuit (line 21): Rechtsstreit, (Zivil-)Prozess
deliberate (line 21): bewusst, absichtlich
to mislead someone, misled, misled (irregular verb, line 21): jemanden
täuschen, irreführen
to accuse someone (line 21): jemanden anklagen
Working on the text
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Tick (9) the right answer.
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Hindus in America …
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don’t have any problems with food.
like to eat steaks.
like to eat horses.
are not allowed to eat beef.
b Before 1990 Mr Sharma …
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often went to a McDonald’s restaurant.
ate hamburgers.
ate cheeseburgers.
didn’t eat at Mc Donald’s.
After 1990 Mr Sharma began to eat McDonald’s French fries because …
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he believed they were vegetarian.
he had enough money.
he liked the taste of the oil.
everyone else did.