3. Does easier-prepared food improve the way people live?

Nowadays, food has become easier to prepare. Has this change improved the way people live? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

『分析』

总体上，“食物变得越来越容易准备”是一种进步，所以自然会带来improvement。使人们的生活方式发生了一些变化：

好的：

节省时间，越来越方便，一定程度上把妇女从繁杂的家务中解放了出来

也有不好的变化：

准备食物是一种重要的家庭活动，可是食物变得容易准备一定程度上使家人在一起的时间减少了，比如“速冻饺子”[quick-frozen dumpling]

快餐业高速发展的一个直接结果是，人们普遍变胖了，尤其是孩子

『范文』

People today can prepare their meal much easier than has ever been before. To prepare a single dinner, provident housewives usually had to work for hours in the past: they had to buy home dirty vegetables which had to wash, meat which had to slice, and so forth. Each and every step of preparation was a time-consuming task. But now, things are entirely different. Supermarkets provide vegetables and meat clean and neat; some of them even have relevant ingredients and need only a few minutes to be made into delicious meals. And this change has indeed greatly improved the way people live.

In a sense, food preparation is no longer a tedious task, at least much easier to tolerate. Such a change has liberated many women and given them chance to do more meaningful things, for example, a higher pay job or a more respectful one. On the other hand, more men are becoming willing to do the thing that they once hated so much, and in some cases such transformation of men brought dramatic positive impact on the family. Today, it's not hard to imagine a wife comes home after a day's hard work and how delightful she is to find out his husband has already prepared her several favorite dishes! Children can more easily become independent — at least they can make themselves breakfasts or dinners when parents are occasionally not present.

But such a change has also brought some unexpected consequences. Girls nowadays are becoming more and more reluctant to deem household work as their responsibility. The reason is quite straightforward: it was once really ridiculous to insist men do trivial household work rather than go work and earn money to support family, but conditions have altered now, girls might think: "I can work as well, or maybe I can earn a higher salary than you do, dear boy friend, if you want to marry me, answer me one question first, will you prepare me breakfast and dinner every day?" And some boys, on the other hand, are becoming hesitant to get married, or simply remain solitary. Among miscellaneous reasons they do so is one thing: "I can take care of myself, at least I don't really need someone prepare me dinner!"

Anyway, such a change is positive and it did improve the quality of people's life. At least it has brought girls, boys, husbands, wives, children and everyone else who has to prepare food an opportunity, no matter what kind of opportunity it is.