“Toxicity and the Consuming Subject” Summary In Nan Enstad’s essay “Toxicity and the Consuming Subject”, Enstad focuses primarily on the idea of toxicity in today’s consumerist society and how capitalism is the main contributor to the distribution, flexibility, and accessibility of it. The essay begins by telling of reporter David Ewing Duncan that, in an attempt to see how many chemicals are acquired through our water, air, and commodities, tested himself for 320 toxic chemicals and a little over half were found present in his body, many over estimated levels. National Geographic provides evidence of how toxic material is deposited in a consumer’s body through commodities they consume or have been exposed to. In an attempt to illustrate the
On December 5, 2012, Daisy Luther, a journalist from Northern California wrote a blog entry on the conspiracy surrounding “certified organic” labels that is claimed by some companies and retailers. She brings up the question of whether these labels being stamped on food can really be verified or are they just a way to empty out the wallets of consumers. In the website The Organic Pepper, the blogger generally gives advice for different problems people encounter on a daily basis. Through her blog entries varying from ways to stay healthy to frugal living, Luther states her opinion of governmental interference on our food supply by citing sources from articles from Natural News and Time Magazine. She first starts out by arguing about how the
Based on the data gathered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average American consumes more than 150 pounds of sugar and sweeteners each year. When broken down, that’s 22 teaspoons of sugar consumed per day. Americans don’t even realize they’re eating this tremendous amount of sugar. In the documentary Hungry for Change, director Laurentine Ten Bosch uses rhetorical appeals to advise that the listeners consider what they are consuming and point out the dangers of sugar and processed foods in everyday diets. While the statistics provided throughout the documentary contributed to the overall effectiveness, the use of emotional appeal was excessive and over-dramatized.
In Michael Pollan’s essay “Escape from the Western Diet,” he directly to Americans about the western diet and why he 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, 420). 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 nutritionist, 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.
“Canadian Lifestyle Choices: A Public Health Failure” by Daniel Rosenfield et al. is a journalistic essay published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal aimed at medical professionals as well as those with a passion for good health. It examines extensive factors that contribute to poor health in Canada, cunningly convicting the government as the major, if not sole, culprit of this issue. Health concerns with respect to cardiovascular and pulmonary illness arise in the wake of the author’s devious presentation of arguments regarding faulty food labeling. It audaciously emphasizes the characteristic health discrepancies between the past and current society, consistently commenting on the government’s constant failure to prevent issues
By growing more and more corn, to get rid of the surplus, companies have switched to corn sweeteners, and have begun to feed more corn to livestock. “Researchers have found that corn-fed beef is higher in saturated fats than grass-fed beef. ” Capitalism has paved the avenues that allow the government, which is always supposed to be in the public’s best interest, to alter the human diet to such extents that we are now gorging ourselves to our inevitable demise. The American diet is not the only thing that is affected by government
Wide media attention was given to last fall’s spinach contamination, which killed three and injured more than 200 in 26 states, and to the Taco Bell food poisonings, which made dozens of people ill” (Cohen 10). As seen these chemicals don not completely remove the issue of diseases in our food. This is an example of how in modern day we still witness food (pollution? Naw but something like that). True nothing is perfect but corruption is ultimately never the solution.
Nowadays in America, we are encountering problems with our food system. The way it’s being processed is affecting everyone. From youngest to oldest, farmers to lawyers and smallest to biggest animal. Consumers are made to believe that they are buying and eating healthy foods , but the labels that led them to believe that are not completely honest. The essay “Escape from the Western Diet” written by Michael Pollan is an explanation of the theories of the western diet.
Relevance between Food and Humans with Rhetorical Analysis In the modern industrial society, being aware of what the food we eat come from is an essential step of preventing the “national eating disorder”. In Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, he identifies the humans as omnivores who eat almost everything, which has been developed into a dominant part of mainstream unhealthiness, gradually causing the severe eating disorder consequences among people. Pollan offers his opinion that throughout the process of the natural history of foods, deciding “what should we have for dinner” can stir the anxiety for people based on considering foods’ quality, taste, price, nutrition, and so on.
In the United States, according to the North American Meat Institute, the average man will consume about 6.9 oz of meat in a day, while a women will consume about 4.4 oz. Meat companies in America produced 25.8 billion pounds of beef and 38.4 pounds of chicken just in 2013 alone. People walk into grocery stores and purchase meat but never think twice about the environment their food, or the workers that handle the animals, were in. Upton Sinclair exposed the industry with “The Jungle” in 1906, people were now fully aware of what was sometimes in the meat, this lead to the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906. Therefore, once the 1980s came along, companies relocated to rural areas and became a non-union workforce.
The toxic sexist culture of Silicon Valley became a subject of Ellen Pao 's book, in which young woman tells about the darkest secrets of this business. The Book 'Reset ' has been acquired by Random House imprint Spiegel & Grau. Ellen Pao signs the book deal for the memoir, in which she 's detailing the sexist culture of Silicon Valley. Pao has been working in Valley many years, first at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and then as interim CEO of Reddit. Quite a bright career as for the young professional, but the toxic culture of famous Silicon Valley made Ellen Pao speak it loud.
Response Four In his article, Drugs, Gore Vidal argues that there is a solution to the drug epidemic in America: simply make all drugs legal and sell them at cost. Gore has a particularly compelling argument, and much of that has to due with the rhetorical strategies and techniques he uses. Gore starts his argument off by saying that marijuana is neither addictive or dangerous, and definitely not as dangerous cocaine and heroin. While this article was written in 1970, many Americans feel this way in 2016— that marijuana is not as dangerous as other drugs. Gore, in a way, is aware of his audience, and accommodates them.
The Obama administration actively promotes the food safety, but fails to advertise effectively against the negative aspects of relations that involving food safety. A more recent and especially important example of poor and bereft government assistance is the aforementioned Flint Michigan water crisis. Governor, Rick Snyder of Michigan and his personally appointed mayor and city council decided to change the water source of Flint from the clean Lake Huron to the toxic Flint River, all to save money. The governor’s office eventually found out how toxic
However, this is not his only purpose in writing this essay. Additionally, Michael Pollan seeks to reassure the reader that this change will eventually occur and how it will happen. He argues that the food movement of our generation has been successful in changing popular consciousness. However, it has been struggling with shifting, in any impactful way, the “standard American diet,” which he purports has only gotten worse since the 1970s (Envision in Depth p.g
In recent decade, the United States has seen supermarkets continuously get filled with packages labeled with things like “Low sodium” or “No Trans Fats.” Companies stick these labels on their food to match the current fads of what is good for you and what is not. In his essay Unhappy Meals, Michael Pollan advocates a return to natural and basic foods, and deplores nutritionism. Pollan argues that nutritionism does not actually tell people what is healthy or not, and that the only way to be sure you are eating healthy is to eat natural, fresh food.
Imagine having so much pesticides in use that people and animals were actually dying from it. In the 1950’s the overuse of pesticides was a serious problem. Rachel Carson was an activist who was against the use and overuse for these pesticides. She wanted to address this problem to the government and the public and warn about the harmful effects pesticides have on the environment and the people. In “A Fable For Tomorrow”, Rachel Carson utilizes ethos, logos and pathos in order to bring awareness to the overuse of pesticides.