AEP 4 – Food and Diets

Hello there.

It is a pleasure to welcome you to this month’s Phrase Builder and pronunciation practice lesson.

And this month, since we’re talking about

food and diets and being healthy, we’re going to talk about some more advanced level vocabulary for talking about food.

Now, before we get into that, though,

just a quick word, one quick explanation, about the word diet.

Now, people use this to talk about being on a diet where you’re,

maybe, eating a certain kind of food to lose weight or to get a better body or something like that.

But, the word diet in general just means the food that you eat.

So, you can have an unhealthy diet

where maybe you eat fast food all the time or you can have a healthy diet

where you eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables and good meats or something like that.

But, again, to be on a diet,

specifically in the, kind of, regular casual form of the word, it just means that you’re,

uh, eating a specific thing with the purpose of losing weight.

But a diet really in general just means whatever kind of food you’re eating.

So, let’s say, uh, panda bears or pandas have a diet of bamboo.

So, panda bears eat or pandas eat bamboo; that’s what they eat.

Uh, or goldfish have a diet of, uh, you know, little fish flakes or whatever they eat.

So, basically, uh, you know anything that just has a diet, to be having a diet just means the kind of food that you’re eating.

So, there’s two senses of the word;

one is just the kind of food that you’re eating and the other is the

specific, casual way of talking about diet to say that I’m on a diet

means that I’m eating a certain kind of food so that I can lose weight.

Well, now that we’ve gotten past that, we can go into our advanced phrases and then after that, we’ll talk about,

uh, you know, a few other interesting casual things that come up in the conversation that will help you sound more native.

Let’s get started.

Our first word is ingest.

Ingest.

Ingest.

To ingest food means to eat food.

So a young child might use the word I want to eat something

but a scientist might talk about ingesting food.

So, if you’re having a stomach ache and you go to the hospital, maybe the doctor could say, like,

well did you ingest something weird?

Did you ingest some bad medicine or did you ingest some old food?

Now this is, again, it’s a situation where maybe a scientist would be using it or especially if you are, you know, someone that’s a, like a medial person; you’re a doctor or you have academic work in food, that kind of thing,

then ingest is a word that would come up regularly.

It doesn’t come up in regular conversations so often,

but, again, it’s something that I want to be teaching in this lesson because you will hear it and especially you’ll hear it in the conversation,

uh, this month so really be listening for words like this.

Ingest.

I had trouble ingesting some food because I, I broke my jaw, so I couldn’t ingest anything.

Ingest.

Ingest.

And connected with this word is to digest.

Digest something.

So, when you digest something, there is the physical digestion

which you take food and then break it down into pieces so that your body can use the nutrients of that food.

And there’s also to digest information.

If you’ve been a member of Master English Conversation for more than a few months,

you’ll probably remember the, I believe it was the, um,

it was the lesson with my sister, I believe. And we were talking about journalism and society,

uh, and talking about being able to digest information.

So, being able to take information and actually use that in a productive way, just like your body digests food.

Next, edible.

Now this is actually a word that came up in last month’s lesson set about plants and gardening.

To be edible is just a, again, a more advanced sounding word for can you eat something.

So, edible.

Just like doable

or, uh, watchable or, you know, legible.

So, legible means, like, if you have writing that’s, uh, something that could be read; it’s easy to read.

So, edible, we’re taking eat and able, like being able to do something, and putting it together.

Edible.

Edible.

So, sometimes I go walking in the woods around my home and I look for edible plants.

Edible plants.

Or I’m looking for, you know, maybe some edible mushrooms or some edible bamboo shoots.

These are the little, little young, uh, bamboo pieces that are coming out; the young seeds that are growing.

So, anytime you’re looking for something edible, it just means you can eat it.

Edible.

I hope you go out and be careful when you look for things because maybe some things are not edible;
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they are inedible.

Inedible.

Inedible.

Now, here’s something that’s a quick side note, and a side note just means we’re gonna take our regular information, like the lesson here, and then just add some little piece of information that’s also important.

When you’re learning about things like this, especially more advanced vocabulary,

the best way to learn it to learn the pieces of these individual words.

Because what we’re really doing is taking a word like inedible or indigestion

and then we’re taking them and, kind of, mixing and matching and putting them together

to make new words that basically mean, like, you can do something or you can’t do something, that kind of thing.

And if you can learn them in groups, you learn them together like inedible, indigestion, inactive,

uh, indestructible, things like that, you can learn that, ah, in means the opposite of what I’m doing here.

And instead of learning the definition of that, you can, you can, kind of, give your mind, or give your brain,

a sense of what the meaning of that word is.

So, anytime you’re listening to these,

listen carefully for the patterns in the prefixes and the suffixes that we’re using.

So the prefix is the word that comes at the beginning of the sentence and the suffix is the word that comes at the end, or the part of the word.

So, inedible.

So, in eh dable.

So, we’ve got able, which is kind of the suffix there, it’s the last part of that,

which means you can do something

and ed we’re talking about eating and in means you can’t do it.

So, inedible.

Inedible.

Inedible.

So, practice with the prefixes and the suffixes and listen carefully to all these words as they appear in the conversation.

Next, your daily intake.

Daily intake.

So, again we’re going to take in; your intake.

Often the, uh, the diet that’s recommended by the government, or by doctors, or whatever, they recommend a daily intake

of, you know, maybe two glasses of milk or eight glasses of water or,

you know, whatever the food is, but they talk about what you should be eating.

Again, we’re using, it’s just a bit kind of higher level vocabulary,

but it means the same thing.

So, how much should you eat every day or what’s your daily intake.

You’re daily intake.

So, you’re daily intake of wine or you’re daily intake of bread or you’re daily intake of sugar should be so much.

My daily intake of sugar should be one teaspoon; that’s it.

I should not have more sugar than that.

Or, I should I have only two grams of meat or, you know, ten pounds of meat; whatever that is.

Your daily intake.

Daily intake.

Next, health nut.

A health nut.

Now, to be nuts, again, and you’ll hear this again in the Fluency Corner lesson,

but to be nuts about something means you’re a big fan of that thing or, and you know, it’s almost like you’re,

you’re so crazy about it that you can’t think about it rationally.

You can’t think about it in a smart, logical way.

So, if I am a sports nut, then I really love my local sports team and I’m always cheering for them and I watch every game.

And if I am a health nut,

it means that I’m serious about health and I’m always learning about new things; what’s the latest diet.

What’s the weightest, uh, the latest way to get healthy, so I’m a health nut.

A health nut.

You’ll hear this in the conversation again.

Health nut.

Health nut.

Are you a health nut?

Are you a sports nut?

Next, we’ve got extract and extract.

Hmm.

Extract.

Extract.

Now this is weird.

Let’s get into this a little bit because you will hear this frequently

in English where we’re talking about the verb from of something and the noun form of that same thing.

So, with extract, we’re gonna talk about vanilla, which I talked about in the lesson.

And I actually learned I had made a mistake, which you’ll see in the video because I make mistakes all the time.

Uh, I thought, uh, vanilla, was coming from the bark of a tree but that was cinnamon, which I also had remembered but I also had, kind of, forgot, too.

So, you’ll see me make a mistake;

it’s a pretty funny, actually in the lesson.

But, uh, to extract something means to take out a part of something. Like you could,

uh, extract my blood or you, you could extract,

uh, gold from the ground.

It doesn’t mean that you, like, suck it out but it just means to take something thing and move it to another one.

So, usually you’re leaving the rest of the dirt there in, uh, in a gold mine and you’re extracting the gold.

But, the noun form becomes extract.

Extract.

Extract.

So we talk about vanilla extract.

Vanilla extract.

Vanilla extract.

So, we want to extract the vanilla, or we want to,

uh, extract the vanilla from the bean that it’s in or we want to extract the gold.

So, let’s extract the gold.

But once we have the vanilla, we want to make vanilla extract.

Vanilla extract.

Now this is something you have to watch the conversation so you can see how we do this naturally to listen to, oh, you can make vanilla extract.

Vanilla extract.

Now, this isn’t something that’s really, really particular that you really have to worry about.

Most people will understand from the context of the situation.

So, if you’re talking about vanilla extract,

then people understand they mean, like, the bottle of, uh, liquid where you’ve got kind of vanilla flavor in it.

So that’s a vanilla extract.

Or if you want to extract some gold, people will understand what you’re talking about, as well.

And that’s why the context of the sentence is very important, or the context of the conversation.

Next salinity.

Salinity.

When I’m pronouncing it fast, salinidy, even though again we have that T sound, salinity

becomes salinidy when we’re pronouncing it quickly.

What’s the salinity of the ocean?

The salinity.

The salinity of something just means the amount of salt in it.

The salinity; salt content.

So, there’s really nothing amazing about the word; it’s just the,

uh, more scientific way to talk about what percent of salt, or the salt content,

of something and so when we’re talking about the actual rocks of salt, which you can see in the conversation,

we’re talking about the different levels or the different amounts of salinity.

Salinity.

Listen for this word in the conversation.

Salinity.

Next, a nice, easy, fun word that you will see a lot of in casual conversations is raw.

Raw.

There is a kind of popular movement now about eating more raw food, so uncooked food,

and the reason this is is because a lot of the nutrients are destroyed or removed from food when they’re cooked.

Now, some things, actually the food becomes better for you when you cook it.

Again, I’m not a chef.

I don’t know specifically, but I’ve heard both of these things.

And the raw thing, it just, you could be eating anything like raw fish or,

especially, raw vegetables; instead of cooking things or boiling them, you just eat the raw vegetable.

I actually like to eat lots of raw vegetables.

I like salads and a lot of people in Japan make fun of me because I like to eat raw carrots.

So, they say I look like a rabbit today.

That’s okay, I look like a rabbit, maybe.

But, I like to eat raw carrots,

uh, but there are some things that you should stay away from like raw eggs.

Uh, you know, maybe some raw eggs can be good in some places, I know in Japan, I’ve actually had raw eggs, but I recommend you don’t try raw chicken.

Now that actually, aw, that, that was really, really awful for my body.

I actually talked about that in a lesson where I went to Japan recently.

Uh, but I talked about eating raw chicken and I do not recommend you eat raw chicken.

It will definitely, you know, or it could potentially, be quite bad for your body.

Raw.

Raw

Our next word is unadulterated.

I really love this word; unadulterated.

This is a really classy, advanced way of saying that you haven’t put any chemicals or any bad things into something.

To adulterate something means to put a, uh, like a poison into it or a bad thing; a chemical or to even just mix it and make it not pure anymore.

So, unadulterated honey means there are no processed foods or sugars or anything added to the honey.

It is pure.

So it’s just a, again, more advanced way of saying pure or fresh or natural.

So, that is, uh, just kind of the normal food.

It’s unadulterated.

And if you adulterate something, you add something to reduce the purity of it.

So, you could have unadulterated food,

uh, which is usually what we talk about it.

And, again, it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily poisonous or bad for you,

it just means you’re lowering the purity level of that.

Adulterated or unadulterated.

I like to eat unadulterated honey.

I like to eat unadulterated honey.

Now, we’ll get into some of the longer phrases that appear and we’ll make a few sentences and go over their pronunciation.

Here we go.

The first one is my mistake.

My mistake.

This is a very casual, very clear and easy way to say oops, I’ve made a mistake.

So, in the conversation when I’m talking about,

uh, I thought I was being smart and show, hey, I knew that vanilla came from the bark of a tree, but, oh,

it actually doesn’t come from the bark of a tree.

And I’m, I’m a little but stupid I guess, maybe, because I was even talking about vanilla beans.

So, if it’s a bean, it comes from the bean of the tree and not the bark of the tree, but we all make mistakes.

So, instead of a longer thing about I’m sorry, I made a mistake which is kind of a longer thing to remember and it’s a bit more,

uh, just, kind of, not so natural to say, you can just say, ah, my mistake.

My mistake.

And usually my mistake is for something that’s a casual thing; it’s not such a big problem.

Now, if I have a bad car accident, I would not say, ah, my mistake.

I mean that’s a serious problem so we wouldn’t use my mistake.

But in the conversation I’m using my mistake because it’s just not that big of a deal.

It doesn’t matter if vanilla comes from the bark of a tree or if it comes from the bean of a tree.

So, my mistake.

So, my mistake for introducing it the wrong way, but

it’s a great example of a nice phrase when you do make a pretty, kind of, nice, not such an important mistake.

My mistake.

My mistake.

Next, in the same boat.

In the same boat.

To be in the same boat with someone just means that you have,

uh, the same situation as them or you are doing the same thing that they are.

And, more importantly, whatever happens to them will happen to you also.

So, usually to be in the same boat with someone means if they are having a problem, you are having a problem as well.

So, right now, you and I could be in the same boat if we are still working for the same company

and maybe the company is not doing so well.

So, you know, people are talking about, like, losing their job,

or they’re talking about the company being bought by another company,

and so we are both worried. And we are connected because we are both in the same boat.

We’re in the same boat on this one.

We’re in the same boat.

So, you and other people that are learning English are in the same boat.

You can also be learning things or doing things where you’re connected to the other people.

So, to be in the same boat just means you’re experiencing the same thing in the same way

and usually if one thing that’s good happens or bad happens, that same thing will happen to the other person as well because you are in the same boat.

So, if the boat sinks, you both sink.

If the boat, uh, does well, if the boat goes higher or makes it to wherever it’s going, then you both get there.

In the same boat.

In the same boat.

Next, treat it like.

Treat it like.

To treat something in a certain way means to think about it or use it in a certain way.

You’ll often hear young children that are maybe teenagers that are saying don’t treat me like a kid.

Don’t treat me like a kid.

So, they are at that age, maybe 12-13 years old where they’re starting to become an adult

and they are saying, well, don’t treat me like a kid.

So, that means don’t think of me like a kid and behave with me as if I were a kid.

You can also talk about treat my home like it was your home.

So treat my hone as if it were your home.

So, treat it like family or treat it like it’s your own home.

So, to treat something like something else just means to think about it in a certain way or use it in a certain way.

You can treat this lesson like a conversation.

You can treat this lesson like a conversation.

And that just means it may not be an actual conversation, but you can think about it

as if it were a real conversation, or like we are having a real conversation and we can talk to each other.

So, treat it like family.

Treat it like your home.

Treat it like a kid.

Treat it like a conversation.

It’s just the same thing as saying it’s compared to this thing, so use it like this or think about it like this.

Next, when native speakers are cooking, we often talk about the comparison, or the ratio, of ingredients

and we don’t say two cups sugar, one cup flour because that’s only for a certain number of ingredients.

Let’s say, let’s say I’m having, uh, a recipe for cookies and it says one cup sugar, one cup flour.

So, what I’m really doing if I want to make a really, really big recipe is one parts, or one part sugar, one part flour.

This means if I have four cups of sugar, I have four cups of flour as well.

So, if you want to talk about a specific recipe, you can talk about the

actual ingredient amount, like two eggs, uh, or three cups of milk.

But if you want to talk about just the ratio or the comparison of things,

so, you want to make a really big recipe, we can just say three parts water, one part flour.

Or two parts milk, one part sugar.

So, that just means however much we use that we should have that same,

uh, kind of ratio of ingredients.

So two parts milk, one part flour.

Two parts cream, one part flour.

You can also talk about equal parts.

So, if you’ve got one part egg, one part milk you can say we’ve got equal parts egg and milk in this recipe.

Equal parts egg and milk in this recipe.

And finally, our last two phrases for this fun Phrase Builder lesson,

and these are not one bit and for the most part.

For the most part.

So, let’s look at them individually.

Not one bit is just another casual way of saying not at all.

I don’t like cookies one bit.

Not one bit.

That’s not true, actually; if you have some cookies, please send them to my home cause I do love cookies a lot.

But, usually, you know, little kids are talking about

I don’t like, I don’t like spinach one bit.

I don’t like spinach one bit.

Not one bit.

So, not even a small amount.

Not even one bit, that’s how much I don’t like spinach.

So, not one bit.

And the other one is for the most part, and this is a regular, kind of, phrase way of saying usually.

For the most part, I,

you know, I come home after work and I do some studying and then maybe I go to the gym.

So, that’s my regular schedule.

For the most part.

For the most part.

Usually, I come home and I read the newspaper after work.

For the most part, I come home and read the newspaper after work.

For the most part.

For the most part, this lesson should be pretty easy to understand,

but maybe some things are a little bit tricky and you have to,

kind of, review them and maybe search things online.

And, again, I don’t want to give you everything; I want to give you

a way, for the most part, that you can understand things and then actually want to go out and learn more about them.

So, your education depends on you.

I am helping you learn and hopefully I am guiding you to become a better English speaker.

But for the most part, the, uh, you know, the way that you become fluent, all of that, it’s on you.

So it’s up to you to become a great speaker.

Well, I hope for the most part this has been a really interesting lesson and that you will,

you know, love every bit and that you will not hate one bit of this lesson.

Well, I hope it’s been a fantastic lesson for you and I look forward to seeing you in

the Fluency Corner lesson and the Master Class lesson this month as well.

Go back and review all of these words and phrases and really practice using them in your conversations.

That’s how you get better.

Have a fantastic day and I will see you in the next lessons.

Bye bye.