下線部内容説明問題対策

高校３年７月ベネッセ模試を使って、下線部内容説明問題の解説をしています。

   As reported in the New York Times in February 2015, about 2 percent of children in the United States are allergic to peanuts, a number that has quadrupled since 1997. No one can explain why, and there's been a sharp rise in all allergies in the past few decades, which also remain (  ア  ). This rise holds true across all Western countries.

   A child with a strong peanut allergy can potentially die from exposure to even a small trace of peanuts in food. The standard recommendation has been that giving peanut butter and other peanut-related foods to infants increases their risk for developing the allergy. But a compelling 2014 Study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (イ)has turned conventional wisdom on its head. Feeding infants foods like peanut butter early in life "dramatically decreases the risk of development of peanut allergy," the study's authors concluded. This was heartening news, since it indicated that a step in infant care could reduce or even reverse a rising trend.

   The new study was based in London, where 530 infants considered at risk for developing peanut allergy (for example, they might already be allergic to eggs or milk) were divided into two groups. Starting when the infants were between four and eleven months old, one group was fed food containing peanuts, while the other had such foods withheld. By age five, the group exposed to peanuts had a far lower incidence of allergy, 1.9 percent as compared with 13.7 percent for those whose parents avoided feeding them peanut foods. In fact, it was speculated that having concerned parents keep peanuts away from their infant children might have actually caused the dramatic rise in peanut allergies.

問1　本文中の空所（ア）に入れるのに最も適当なものを，次の1～4のうちから一つ選び，番号で答えよ。

 　　　1 a mystery   2 allergies   3 an increase   4 the truth

問2　下線部(イ)の内容，“conventional wisdom”とはどのようなことかを具体的に述べた　　上で，50字程度の日本語で説明せよ。ただし，句読点も字数に数える。

問３　次の英文の空所（A）,（B）に適切な語をそれぞれ一語入れ，第3パラグラフ(The new study～)で説明されている研究の方法を簡潔に述べよ。

One group of children was allowed to (  A  ) peanut foods, while the other was made to (  B  ) such foods.