Rhetorical Analysis Of Cheap Food Nation

Eric Schlosser agues in “Cheap Food Nation” that the food and livestock industry in the United States is in a state of disarray. He argues that people’s heath is largely effected by the way food is processed and grown. In the article Schlosser uses rhetorical appeals in his writing to express his beliefs. He uses rhetorical appeals to argue that “the driving force behind all these changes has been the desire to make food cheaper and produce it faster” (Schlosser 1).There are four appeals in total which are logos, pathos, ethos and kairos. What I found was in this article Schlosser uses aspects of pathos and ethos frequently. Pathos appeals to emotions and values of the audience. Ethos on the other hand appeals to a reader’s trustworthiness

When authors in general use emotion in there writing it makes the reader more likely to remember the point the author is trying to make. One way that he does this is when Schlosser compares the usage of steroids in cattle to the steroids used by athletes to enhance their performance. He continues to say “for the past two decades, a number of the same steroids abused by athletes have been given to U.S. cattle on a massive scale” (1). When the author uses this example, he uses pathos because people in America do not like the use of drugs use drug by athletes to better their performance. It’s ironic to a degree because people would be fine with cattle being injected with growth hormones but they don’t want to see it being done by athletes. He uses this reference because it appeals to how people view food and sports. Sports are something Americans take pride in. By combining food and American athletes it can could make people more interested in reading that synthetic hormones are just as bad as their favorite athlete using steroids. Getting a person to conjure up an emotion may get them to understand that by ingesting food with

The way that this happen is he gives us an insight on what other countries have done about their heath and food safety. To give an example of this is he said, “Throughout the European Union, laws have been passed to guarantee food safety and animal welfare, restrict the use of antibiotics among livestock, ban genetically engineered foods, encourage organic production, and begin the deindustrialization of agriculture (3). When he gives this example this allows us to compare the US’s current state and see that other countries have made attempts to better their food safety issues. In the US food safety issues are not as important to American citizens because a lot of the food is cheap. They trust the regulations that are currently in place because they might not see all the issues that come along with the not having the best protocols. Another way of thinking about this is, how people are supposed to know any better when they are informed of the issue. All in all reason why he uses these references because we can see that new technology can be developed. When the US realizes that he currently way that we do things we can better. Once this happens out food industry can become better. In the final analysis to sum everything up the author uses rhetorical appeals to convince the reader that the way that the food and livestock industry is not in the best conditions that one might think