Eat, Pray, Love By Elizabeth Gilbert

Mary Maxfield focuses on Pollan’s comparison between how French people eat so unhealthily, famously indulging in cheese, cream, and wine yet remain on average healthier than Americans verses Americans’ notably unhealthy population preoccupied with the idea of eating healthy. The “they say” argument in this essay is why can the French get away with eating unhealthy, but Americans can not? Pollan points out that “our” definition of healthy eating is driven by a well-funded corporate machine. According to Pollan, the food industry, along with nutrition science and journalism, is capitalizing on our confusion over how to eat. Pollen wants us to focus less on what we eat and more on smaller portion sizes. For example, the fast food industry in America has contributed to American’s over eating by upsizing their products. The essay focuses on a healthy body weight and points out that Americans see fatness as unhealthy and thinness as healthy. Culturally our views of weight skew our views of what foods are right to eat. In other words Americans do not understand that what a person eats is not as important as how much they

Both “The Right of Love” by Gene Lees and “The Canonization” by John Donne represent a form of forbidden love due to ethnicity and religion where both parties are fighting for the acceptance of their relationship. Donne, although catholic, falls in love with a non-catholic woman which is looked down upon by others. In his poem he states, “we in us find th’ eagle and the dove”,the two birds represent two polar opposite symbols, the eagle represent strength and courage, while a dove represents love and peace. Although a relationship between catholics and non-catholics were forbidden, they found a common ground in their love for each other. Differences can strengthen the love between two individuals, which is also shown in “The Right of Love”,

In Michael Pollan’s essay “Escape from the Western Diet,” he informs Americans about the western diet and believes they need to escape from it. The reason Americans should escape the western diet is to avoid the harmful effects associated with it such as “western diseases” (Pollan, 434). To support his view on the issue, Pollan describes factors of the western diet that dictate what Americans believe they should eat. These factors include scientists with their theories of nutritionism, the food industry supporting the theories by making products, and the health industry making medication to support those same theories. Overall, Pollan feels that in order to escape this diet, people need to get the idea of it out of their heads. In turn he

As a culture and as individuals, we no longer seem to know what we should and should not eat. When the old guides of culture and national cuisine and our mothers’ advice no longer seem to operate, the omnivore’s dilemma returns and you find yourself where we do today—utterly bewildered and conflicted about one of the most basic questions of human life: What should I eat? We’re buffeted by contradictory dietary advice: cut down on fats one decade, cut down on carbs the next. Every day’s newspaper brings news of another ideal diet, wonder-nutrient, or poison in the food chain. Hydrogenated vegetable oils go from being the modern alternatives to butter to a public health threat, just like that. Food marketers bombard us with messages that this or that food is “heart healthy” or is “part of a nutritious meal”. Without a stable culture of food to guide us, the omnivore’s dilemma has returned with a vengeance. We listen to scientists, to government guidelines, to package labels—to anything but our common sense and traditions. The most pleasurable of activities—eating—has become heavy with anxiety. The irony is, the more we worry about what we eat, the less healthy and fatter we seem to become.

Healthy, unhealthy, good food, bad food, fat, skinny, diet, weight: all these words have been used to define what society views as the key to a balanced or unbalanced life. In the essay, Food for Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating, Mary Maxfield takes a look into the stigma of eating habits, health, and dieting in western society. Maxfield supports her claims by analyzing and refuting Michael Pollan’s essay, Escape from the Western Diet. Although it is common knowledge that many people struggle to understand what is essentially “healthy” and “unhealthy”, there are many experts in the field of nutrition that claim to have the key to a perfect diet. Maxfield ultimately disclaims these ideas by bringing to light information that

The short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Carver, is about two married couples drinking gin and having a talk about the nature of love. The conversation is a little sloppy, and the characters make some comments which could either be meaningless because of excessive alcohol in the bloodstream, or could be the characters' true feelings because of excessive alcohol in the bloodstream. Overall, the author uses this conversation to show that when a relationship first begins, the people involved may have misconceptions about their love, but this love will eventually die off or develop into something much more meaningful.

In Michael Pollan’s essay, “The American Paradox”, Pollan argues that American’s hold falsified ideas if one is more focused on nutrition. Americans have too much going on in their head with trying to be healthy, that they do not actually become healthy. The notion that “a notably unhealthy population preoccupied with nutrition and the idea of eating healthy” (Pollan 268) is what Pollan defines as the “American paradox”. The amount of time spent focusing on healthy eating habits decreases the joy one contains. Pollan identifies many issues that contribute to what is wrong with the way Americans think about eating today. For instance, we spend too much time and money trying to be healthy, we have strayed away from the past as new inventions occurred and last being we listen to “flawed science”. Despite the fact that many may say they see positive results from focusing on nutrition and health, Americans actually receive negative outcomes from nutrition and health.

McCorcle’s essay ‘Her Chee-to Heart is an informational essay with persuasive undertone that’s main point is that food has a positive emotional value. While the essay is best defined as informational, much of the essay's foundation is coming from the author's personal experience and thus, a more persuasive tone becomes embedded. There is a clear limitation exposed in McCorcle’s essay that cannot be ignored. While she promotes food as a form of comfort, it is unhealthy food that is most associated with in her essay. Turning to unhealthy foods as a form of comfort can develop into a detrimental habit.

what we currently eat, but the entire reasoning behind why. He delves into how advertising,

Whether or not a person wants a burger and french-fries’ or a salad from the salad bar, the decision should be up to him/her. Two articles share views on food, “What You Eat Is Your Business” by Radley Balko and “Junking Junk Food” by Judith Warner. These two authors wrote articles about how they felt about food and how it’s related to obesity. However, Radley Balko would not approve of Judith Warner’s views on food for the reason that the two authors have different viewpoints on the aspect of the government helping people to make better food choices. Warner and Balko also has different views on the ideas which are that eating is a psychological matter; and eating healthy should be a personal matter.

Improving the health conditions of the American population ensures the increased quality of life. People eat for various reasons with the fundamental reason being for survival purposes. However, the issue of eating to live and living to eat affects people in different manners as most people develop poor eating habits that affect the body’s nutritional intake and affects their health. Being healthy involves careful considerations of what one is eating and engaging in activities that contribute to better healthy lives that do not imply daily prescriptions or

In the Introduction to “Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating”, Mary Maxfield argues that food and the way we consume it is not something that should define the obesity epidemic in America. A controversial issue discussed has been whether we should have theories or ideas where diet works best to increase weight loss or whether we should have any diets to begin with. On one hand, Maxfield argues against the Health Professor Michael Pollan, who proposes a diet idea to reduce the problem of unhealthy eating in America. While also reprimanding scientists and health doctors who suggests their own different diets. On the other hand, she introduces that food is just food and does not need to be differentiated since one may seem

“Unhappy Meals” written by Michael Pollan covers the unknown links between diet and our health. When reading the text, paragraphs 40 through 44 affected me the most. It had me think about how some surveys could be unreliable to due unrealistic questions used in the given survey. Previous to reading the article, I had assumed that information given to me about diets, especially the Western types, was correct. While reading the article I began to suspect that my previous assumptions were wrong. The results of this realization had lead me to be more open minded about new information. I began to take in that maybe surveys were not one size fits all. Pollan wrote this article to be persuasive. However, in my opinion, Pollan could benefit from changing

In the Introduction, to “Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating”, Mary Maxfield argues that food and the way we consume it isn’t something that should define the obesity epidemic in America. A controversial issue discussed has been whether we should have theories or ideas on which diet works best to increase weight loss or whether we should have any diets to begin with. On one hand, Maxfield argues against the Health Professor Michael Pollan, who proposes an idea to reduce the problem of unhealthy eating in America, when he himself chastises scientists and other health doctors who suggests different diets. On the other hand, she introduces that food is just food and doesn’t need to be differentiated since one may seem

When in reality that idealistic health is not always accurate or achievable. These health rules can become so discouraging and overwhelming that we give up all together. Thus, in this book Alice and Susan tries to alleviate the stress, guilt and pressure placed on following these strict and possibly unhealthy regimens and rules. They will sift through common health rules to determine what is really true and realistic. That way we as readers will have enough evidence to decide what is appropriate for us and create our own perfect health zones that accommodates life’s many variations. The book so clearly states that “there is no single, uniquely correct way to be health; there are many… a healthy life can and should be simple and enjoyable… [our] goal is to be healthy—not a fanatic—and to live a little” (Love & Domar,