Passage 2 For centuries in Spain and Latin America, heading home for lunch and a snooze with the familywas some thing like a national right, but with global capitalism standardizing work hours, this idyllichabit is fast becoming an endangered pleasure. Ironically, all this is happening just as researchers arebeginning to note the health benefits of the afternoon nap. According to a nationwide survey, less than 25 percent of Spaniards still enjoy siestas. And likeSpain, much of Latin America has adopted Americanized work schedules, too, with shortened lunchtimes and more rigid work hours. Last year the Mexican government passed a law limiting lunchbreaks to one hour and requiring its employees to work their eight-hour shift between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. Before the mandate, workers would break up the shift--going home midday for a long break withthe family and returning to work until about 9 or 10 p.m. The idea of siesta is changing in Greece,Italy and Portugal, too, as they rush to join their more "industrious" counterparts in the globalmarket. Most Americans I know covet sleep, but the idea of taking a nap mid-afternoon equates withlaziness, un employment and general sneakiness. Yet according to a National Sleep Survey poll,65percent of adults do not get enough sleep. Numerous scientific studies document the benefits of naptaking, including one 1997 study on the deleterious effects of sleep deprivation in the journal Inter-nal Medicine. The researchers found that fatigue harms not only marital and social relations butworker productivity. According to Mark Rosekind, a former NASA scientist and founder of Solutions in Cupertino,Calif., which educates businesses about the advantages of sanctioning naps, we′ re biologically pro-grammed to get sleepy between 3 and 5 p.m. and 3 and 5 a.m. Our internal timekeeper--called thecircadian clock--operates on a 24-hour rotation and every 12 hours there′s a dip. In accordancewith these natural sleep rhythms, Rosekind recommends that naps be either for 40 minutes or for twohours. Latin American countries, asserts Rosekind, have had it right all along. They′ ve been in syncwith their clocks; we haven′t. Since most of the world is sleep-deprived, getting well under the recommended eight hours anight (adults get an average of 6.5 hours nightly), we usually operate on a kind of idle midday. Napsare even more useful now that most of us forfeit sleep because of insane work schedules, longercommute times and stress, In a study published last April, Brazilian medical researchers noted thatblood pressure and arterial blood pressure dropped during a siesta. We can infer from the second paragraph that Mexican workers now __________.
A.work fewer hours than in the past B.get home from work much later than in the past C.work more reasonable hours than in the past D.finish the workday earlier than in the past