Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 390, Dietary Restrictions and Preferences.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 390.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Our website is eslpod.com.
Go there and download a learning guide for this episode, which will help you improve your English even faster.
And preferences.
It's a dialogue between Tony and Carmela.
Dietary refers to what you eat.
So the conversation will be about different types of food, different things that people can't eat because of their particular preferences or medical restrictions.
Let's get started.
I invited Keith, Sung, Stephanie, and Luis.
You didn't.
I did.
Why?
You're going to have a hard time cooking for them.
Keith is a vegan and only eats food that's organic.
Sung is lactose intolerant, and his doctor put him on a low-salt diet.
Really?
I didn't know.
How do you know so much about their diets?
I went on a trip with them, and I'll never do it again.
We could never agree on a restaurant.
What about Stephanie and Luis?
Stephanie is a health nut and doesn't eat anything with saturated fat, added sugar or artificial flavors.
She also doesn't eat red meat.
And Luis...
He can only eat gluten-free kosher foods.
This is a disaster.
How am I going to cook for all four of them?
Beats me.
Maybe you can turn it into a potluck.
At least each of your guests will have one dish they can eat.
I can't invite my friends over for dinner and then tell them to bring their own food.
You're right.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Our dialogue begins with Tony asking Carmela who did you invite over for dinner Saturday or on Saturday?
To invite someone over is a phrasal verb meaning to ask someone to come to your house for a.
In this case, Carmela invited some people over for dinner.
She says she invited Keith, Sung, Stephanie, and Luis.
Tony says, He obviously doesn't like this idea.
Carmela says, I did.
Why?
Tony says, you're going to have a hard time cooking for them.
Keith is a vegan and only eats food that's organic.
A vegan, V-E-G-A-N, is a vegetarian.
A very what we might call strict vegetarian who doesn't eat any meat eggs, milk or anything that comes from an animal.
We call that a vegan.
Here in Los Angeles you can go to vegan restaurants where all of the food is of this very strict vegetarian kind.
Keith is a vegan and only eats food that is organic.
Organic means grown naturally without any chemicals.
So the corn or the potatoes or the tomatoes, the food that grows, is not grown by the farmers using chemicals.
Organic has become very popular in the U.S. in the last couple of years.
You can go to the grocery store now and see food that is labeled, that says organic.
Many people think it is healthier.
Tony says, To be lactose intolerant means that you can't eat milk or foods that are made from milk.
Lactose refers to milk. means that you cannot put up with it.
You cannot eat it without having problems, without feeling sick.
So Sung is lactose intolerant, and his doctor put him on a low-salt diet.
This isn't related to being lactose intolerant.
In addition, he's also on a low-salt diet.
A low-salt diet is a combination of foods that has, you can guess, very little salt.
Usually this happens because someone has high blood pressure, a medical condition condition that could cause problems.
So they put them on a low salt diet.
Carmela says, really?
I didn't know.
How do you know so much about their diets?
Tony says, I went on a trip with them and I'll never do it again.
We could never agree on a restaurant, meaning they went on this trip, but because everyone had a special diet, they had to find a place that could accommodate all of them, that would have food for all of them a vegan, lactose intolerant, organic and low-salt diet.
Carmela says, what about Stephanie and Luis?
Tony says, Stephanie is a health nut.
A nut in general can be used to describe a person who's a little crazy, who's a little too fanatical, too interested in something.
A health nut would be someone who is very interested in their health, maybe too interested.
The word nut has a couple of different meanings.
Take a look at our learning guide for some additional explanations.
So Stephanie is a health nut and she doesn't eat anything with saturated fat, added sugar or artificial flavors.
Saturated fat is a type of fat, like grease or oil, that is considered by most doctors to be bad for your heart.
It's often found in foods, or usually found in food made from animals.
Saturated fat is what some doctors call a bad fat, at least in terms of your heart.
The problem is that saturated fat often makes food taste better, and so the good food often has saturated fat, at least the food that I like to eat.
Added sugar means additional sugar when companies make a food product and they put additional sugar in it, like cereal, for example, for children.
Stephanie doesn't eat anything with artificial flavors.
Flavor is another word here for taste.
Artificial is the opposite of natural.
Things that are made by humans to change the taste of something, not the real taste of the food or the ingredients that make the food.
Usually artificial flavors are made with some sort of chemical that is produced by the company.
Tony says that Stephanie also doesn't eat red meat.
Red meat is meat-based that is dark in color, such as beef, which is meat from a cow or lamb.
Those are considered red meat.
Chicken is not considered red meat, even though it's a kind of meat.
We call that poultry to distinguish it between the meat that you get from a cow or a lamb, say.
He continues, and Luis, he can only eat gluten-free kosher foods.
Gluten is a kind of substance that is found in wheat, in oatmeal, in other what we would call grains.
Some people can't eat food with gluten in it.
It makes them sick.
So they need food that is gluten-free.
Kosher food is food that is prepared in a special way following Jewish laws.
So someone who is of the Jewish religious faith may only want to eat food that is kosher, that is prepared according to certain rules and regulations that are traditional in the Jewish community.
Carmela says, this is a disaster.
How am I going to cook for all four of them?
Tony says, beats me.
This expression, beats me, means that you don't know.
You don't understand something or you don't have an explanation for something.
The word beat has a couple of different meanings in English.
Take a look at the learning guide for some more explanations.
Tony says, beats me.
I don't know.
Maybe you can turn it into a potluck.
To turn something into something means to change something.
So Tony is saying maybe you can change the meal to a potluck meal.
A potluck P-O-T-L-U-C-K.
One word is is a meal where every person brings something to share with someone else or everyone else.
So I may bring a salad, you may bring dessert, someone else may bring some meat and so forth.
Everyone brings some food.
That's called a potluck dinner or a potluck meal.
Carmela says, I can't invite my friends over for dinner and then tell them to bring their own food.
Tony says, well, you wanted a solution and beggars can't be choosers.
This is an old expression.
Beggars can't be choosers.
It means that you can't always have a choice about what your options are, especially if you have a difficult situation.
Sometimes you are not in the position of asking for a particular solution.
You just need to take the option available to you and not complain about it.
A beggar is someone who stands in the street and asks for money as people walk by.
The verb is to beg.
So the idea is that if you are asking other people for a solution and you don't have any other options, then you can't choose the option.
You don't have a lot of choice.
You can't be a chooser.
So beggars can't be choosers.
Carmela says you're right.
And then she uses another common expression desperate times call for desperate measures.
To be desperate means to be in a situation where it is very difficult, where you don't have a lot of hope.
So desperate times, desperate situations...
So if you're in a difficult situation, you need to use desperate measures.
Desperate measures would be.
Desperate means desperate methods, ways of solving the problem.
You need to use extreme or unusual measures in order to get out of this difficult situation.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Who did you invite over for dinner saturday?
I invited Keith Sung, Stephanie and Luis.
You didn't.
I did.
Why?
You're going to have a hard time cooking for them.
Keith is a vegan and only eats food that's organic.
Sung is lactose intolerant, and his doctor put him on a low-salt diet.
Really?
I didn't know.
How do you know so much about their diets?
I went on a trip with them, and I'll never do it again.
We could never agree on a restaurant.
What about Stephanie and Luis?
Stephanie is a health nut and doesn't eat anything with saturated fat, added sugar or artificial flavors.
She also doesn't eat red meat.
And Luis, he can only eat gluten-free kosher foods.
This is a disaster.
How am I going to cook for all four of them?
Beats me.
Maybe you can turn it into a potluck.
At least each of your guests will have one dish they can eat.
I can't invite my friends over for dinner and then tell them to bring their own food.
Well, you wanted a solution, and beggars can't be choosers.
You're right.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
The script for this episode was made with added sugar by Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thanks for listening.
Come back and listen to us next time on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
This podcast is copyright 2008.
