Our current age of unprecedented and ever-expanding access to information, we can find out where our food comes from and the impacts that it produced along the way from field to plate. Accordingly, as Scott Canon discusses in his article, “Why You Can’t Sit Down to Eat without Making a Communication,” American consumers are discovering some disturbing things about the food’s origins and production costs, both in terms of its environmental damage and the suffering it can cause, whether for the humans who raise and harvest it or for the animals we eat. This was written against a context of increased concern about climate change, our polluted and overfished oceans, increased rates of food-influenced diseases like diabetes and cancer, and growing …show more content…
The closest thing to a thesis statement is this line: “In the global village of 21st-century food production, what you eat makes a political statement.” Originally published for The Seattle Times in 2005, Canon’s message remains relevant today.
The audience for this article would likely be both those who are already interested in contemporary food issues and those who aren’t but are intrigued by the title, which might seem like an overstatement to the uninformed. Considering that Seattle is a pretty progressive region, this newspaper’s readers are likely to be sympathetic to the idea that we should do what we can to fight climate change and promote social justice with our consumer dollars. Considering that Canon tries to cover both sides of the many food controversies he mentions, though, it is likely to draw in more conservative readers, as well. Going beyond the price tag to find what food really costs in terms of human rights violations and environmental damage, Canon builds a solid Logos appeal by modeling the ways well-intended consumers make decisions based on limited information. For example, Canon cites granola as a food most believe is healthful, but then he reveals a little-known