Chinese people are eating too much salt on average, people in China eat about 10.5 grams of salt each day, much higher than the 6 grams suggested by Chinese Dietary Guidelines.

China now has one of the highest salt intakes (摄入量) in the world. To solve this, China introduced the first salt reduction guide to its food industry (工业) on April 18, 2018. The guide calls for food companies to lower the salt content in their food by improving the way of making food and changing tastes.

The salt we take in usually comes from processed food (加工食品), which can be easily found on supermarket shelves. For example, a 104-gram bag of Lay’s classic potato chips has about 0. 66 grams of salt, about 10% of the suggested daily salt intake! However, unprocessed food, mainly fresh fruits and vegetables contains little. If the guide is followed correctly, the average salt intake will drop by 20% by 2030.

Eating too much salt brings a lot of health problems, especially increasing the risk of high blood pressure. Less salt is important for good health, and there’s no need to worry that food will be less tasty in the future. A study by the Monell Chemical Senses Center found that it’s easy for people to reduce their salt intake. Although you may think your food is not salty enough at first, your taste buds (味蕾) will get used to it and slowly you will feel that your food tastes the same as it did before.

You wake up early from Monday to Friday because you have to go to school on time. 【小题1】

So why do you wake up early on weekends when you don’t want to? 【小题2】 In each sleep cycle (睡眠周期), you go through light sleep, deep (沉睡的) sleep, dream sleep, waking up and then going back to sleep. A cycle lasts about 90 minutes. You may go through four to six cycles one night.

【小题3】 First of all, if you wake up early on weekdays, your body will get used to it. This means you’ll wake up around the same time every day, even without an alarm. Secondly, on weekends, you might wake up early because you wake up naturally at the end of your sleep cycle. 【小题4】 And you may feel tired if an alarm wakes you up during a deep sleep.

Sleep cycles play a big role in your sleep. So, having a regular (定时的) wake-up time is important. 【小题5】

You might not think much about where your garbage goes. But now you might want to know. On July 1, Shanghai had a new garbage sorting policy(垃圾分类政策). People there need to put different kinds of garbage into different bins. Other cities in China will do the same soon.

Why is garbage sorting a big problem? It’s because there is too much garbage these days. It is bad for our land, air and water. In fact, we can make use of some garbage again. And first, we need to sort(分类) our garbage. For example, if you put an old battery(电池) into the “harmful waste(有害垃圾)’’ bin, people can use it to make new batteries. But if you don’t, the battery will end up somewhere else. Then, it will be bad for the environment(环境).

Can’t factories sort garbage for us? Yes, they can. But it takes many workers to do this and needs lots of money. If we all sort our own garbage, things will become much easier.