Zinczenko uses ethical appeal by using a personal experience from his own life as a backing to support his argument which shows that he has personal stake in and first-hand experience with the problem. He starts his essay by telling the readers that he was living on a fast food diet during his teenage years, like most American teens. He grew up with divorced parents and a mother who worked long hours. His mother did not have enough time to cook healthy food due to her job to make money for both of them; thus, he did not have an alternate choice but to turn to fast food restaurant like McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, for his daily meals. Day by day he started to gain weight and, by the age of 15, his weight was 212 pounds, which is not proper for a kid of his age. Zinczenko mentions that he, eventually, turned his life around and began to make healthier choices when he went to college and joined the Navy Reserves and got involved with a health magazine which helped him in making better choices regarding his diet and losing weight. Although he points out that he was able to manage his diet, he admits that “Most of the teenagers who live, as [he] once did, on a fast-food diet won’t turn their lives around” (463). His concern is that many teenagers that are experiencing what he went through will not be able to improve their eating habits the way he did and will remain obese for the rest of their lives. By Zinczenko involving himself in his essay and speaking
The article “Don't Blame The Eater,” written by David Zinczenko evokes readers the crucial impact that fast food restaurants have in today's nation's youth causing them to be over weight and have type 2ndiabetes. Throughout Zinczenko's argument he makes the reader view the consumer as a victim yet on the other hand, what he is trying to persuade us to believe by using logos,pathos,and ethos in his argument is that the food industry is the one making the nation's youth to increase obesity. The capacity of impressive questions and personal experience, he composed in the text he is able to comprehensively argue against the fast food industry. The author persuades us right away by starting of with a question: “Kids taking on McDonald's this
In the essay, “Don’t Blame the Eater”, David Zinczenko, editor-in-chief of Men’s Health magazine, discusses the recent lawsuits against fast-food chains. He does not deny that there should be a sense of personal responsibility among the public, but has sympathy for the kid consumers because he used to be one. Zinczenko argues that due to the lack of nutritional facts and health warnings, it’s not so ridiculous to blame the fast-food industry for obesity problems.
In David Zinczenko’s article “Don’t Blame the Eater” he focuses on the fast food industry and their role in the increasing health and obesity issues of our nation’s children, as well as these issues potentially becoming a serious problem that we will all have to deal with if we collectively don’t do something about it now. When it comes to the topic of fast food, most of us can agree that it is not the best source of nutrition. It is unhealthy and can be the cause of many serious health issues with our children such as obesity related Type 2 diabetes, stomach ulcers and even heart disease, high cholesterol, sleep apnea or even cancer. We can even agree that fast-food diets are a major contributing factor to
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
Zinczenko use of pathos pulls at our heartstrings and allows us to sympathetic towards him. As a child, he fell victim to the fast food industry himself. “By age 15, I had packed 212 pounds of torpid teenage tallow on my once lanky 5-foot-10 frame” (463). He became obese at such a young age because he was a son of a single, hard-working mother whose only way of providing for him was through the fast food industries because of convenience. He would consume two to three meal a day from one of these popular food companies. “Lunch and dinner, for me, was a daily choice between McDonald's, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken or Pizza Hut” (462). When one reads statements such as these they are forced to think about their own unhealthy choices that they have made in their lives. One contemplates if they too have fallen prey to the fast food industries. Zinczenko uses this appeal to allow us to assess our own moral and put ourselves in a perspective of someone who has been a victim of the fast food
In the essay, “What You Eat is Your Business”, Radley Balko writes to tell his audience about how the government is trying to control people’s health and eating habits by restricting food, taxing high calorie food, and considering menu labeling. Balko includes in his essay that government restricting diets and having socialist insurance is not helping the obesity problem, but it is only making it worse because it not allowing people to take their health in to their own hands so they have no drive to lose weight or eat healthy. In his essay, Balko is targeting society, including those who may be obese, he is trying to show them that the laws our
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.
According to his article, “The Battle Against Fast Food Begins In The Home”, the author, columnist and blogger Daniel Weintraub, argues parents, not fast-food companies or the government are responsible for their child's health and well being. Weintraub supports this claim by providing data from the Center For Public Health Advocacy on the subject of overweight schoolchildren, State law recommendations outlining nutritional standards, and his own experience with the problem. Weintraub intends to convince or persuade the parents or parent to accept the blame for their overweight child. From my standpoint, however, it is clear the
In Don’t Blame the Eater, David Zinczenko composes his opinion on the fast food industry’s absence of nutritional information and more. Zinczenko starts his piece by giving his own life experience. He recalls his childhood trying to find food and that fast food was “the only available options for an American kid to get an affordable meal” (Zinczenko 462). By giving his own life experience, Zinczenko relates to the reader and grabs their attention.
“The Cato Institute’s” Policy analyst, Radley Balko, in his article “What You Eat Is Your Business,” talks about the idea of obesity and whose fault it is. Balko’s purpose is to convey the idea that obesity is the individual’s responsibility, not the government’s or anyone else’s for that matter. Ultimately, Balko’s “What You Eat Is Your Business” has a strong hold on ethos, pathos, and logos, making for a successful and persuasive article.
David Zinczenko's article "Don't Blame the Eater" discuses with regard to a series of health-related topics involving food that most people and, particularly, young individuals eat today. The article is meant to raise public awareness concerning the risks associated with consuming particular foods. These respective risks are generally ignored because companies selling the products refrain from emphasizing the exact effects that consuming their food can have on someone's health. The reality is that cheap foods are an appealing alternative for young people who are more concerned about the quantity than the quality of the foods they eat.
He believes that the government should make consumers responsible for their choices instead of trying to change what foods are accessible to consumers. In addition, he suggests that “The best way to alleviate the obesity ‘public health’ crisis is to remove obesity from the realm of public health” (468). In other words, Balko thinks that obesity wouldn’t be such a great public issue if we made it the personal issue that it is. Throughout his article, he relies on his opinion without providing any numbers for the readers. On the contrary, Zinczenko uses a lot of statistics and data to support his argument.
In the reading “ Don’t blame the eater", David Zinczenko argues that children, that eat fast food restaurant should not be blamed for their weight gain. Zinczenko claims that the only affordable meal option for an American teenager is fast food. He also explains that today's fast food chains fill the nutritional null in children's lives given by their troubled working parents. Zinczenko's childhood had circumstances that he had no healthy alternatives to fast food chains and blames this for the weight he gained. This reading has a strong message about fast food companies making kids fat, and all they rely on when their parents are employed and have no chance to cook for them.
They also offer a false sense of control. You appear to have many choices - a Big Mac, a cheeseburger, a quarter pounder, a double quarter pounder or a "Big 'N' Tasty" - but they're all pre-packaged, frozen, pre-cooked hamburger. If you want to be radical, have fried chicken, fried fish pieces, even flatbread sandwiches. But you have no control over portion size, or the way your meal is cooked. One of the ways we learn who we are is by the choices we make. Americans let this happen. Now fast-food corporations are infiltrating our public schools, in the form of funds in exchange for advertising. The deliberate marketing soft drink and fast-food companies direct at the youngest of children is wrong. It seem that Americans have just become so used to the fact that McDonalds is always there for when they are running late and do not have time to fix dinner. Or to calm their children down if they are acting up. Fast food industries make it so easy for people to be lazy. The number of obese adults and children in America has risen directly alongside the increase of fast-food restaurants and has extracted high personal, physical, and financial cost to the nation. In the end Americans are like guinea pigs for the fast food industries, being used to see what they can do and how far they can go.
Zinczenko, in "Don't Blame the Eater," points out the fact that fast-food restaurants should help people take