Read these paragraphs from the excerpt:
Cooking: it's a simple act that has brought families around the world together for thousands and thousands of years.
As a chef, I can think of few things more beautiful than that. However, I also know how deadly such a simple act can be , not only to our health, but to our environment.
Think about it: For Americans, turning on the stove means simply turning a knob or switch. For people living in developing countries, particularly women and children, it means hours of collecting fuels like firewood, dung, or coal to burn in a rudimentary, smoky cookstove or over an open fire.
How do these paragraphs contribute to the development of the author’s argument?
They introduce the solution to the negative effects of cooking in the developing world that appears in later paragraphs.
They establish the author’s expert knowledge about cooking, which demonstrates he is an authority on inferior cookstoves.
They provide personal support for the global solution to the problems of cooking that the author presents in the article.
They stress that Americans take for granted the ease of cooking in the United States so they may be unsympathetic about this issue.
