Salatin’s solution to this problem is to simply not take part in the food giants game, and follow four simple steps. Salatin claims that if we teach ourselves to cook again, buy only local, buy strictly what is in season, and plant a garden, then what seems to be impossible can be possible and the corporate food system will come crashing down. Firstly, Salatin gives the statistic that somewhere around 70 percent of Americans do not have plans for what they will be eating for dinner before 4 in the afternoon. Not only this, but 25 percent of Americans meals are said to be consumed in their vehicles.…
In Michael Pollan’s article “Escape from the Western Diet” the author reminds us of the many different studies that tell us that what is considered healthy for us, changes like the shifting wind. Pollan goes on to say that there are three groups that gain from the confusion what is a healthy diet, the food industry, nutritional science, and journalism. Pollan claims the food industry is to blame because they use different nutritional theories to release new products, and that the nutritional science industry is to blame because they use theories to develop new prescriptions and treatment methods. A journalist writes the articles pertaining to all the different ways that are claimed healthy eating. Pollan says “eat foods that are less processed”.…
“The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000” (Food, Inc). This really is true, because, before fast food and processed canned foods, people used to have to hunt for their food. Now, we have 24-hour fast food restaurants, and we have over 47,000 food products to chose from in our supermarkets. Since 1980, the percentage of obese children has gone from 5.8% to 17.5% (Obesity Rates 1). 38% of adults in our nation are considered obese, but 33% of the people who are obese didn’t graduate from high school (Obesity 3).…
“Escape from the Western Diet,” was an article written by Michael Pollan to inform Americans about the dangers of the western diet and believes that it would be beneficial to escape from it. In Mary Maxfield’s essay “Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating” she talks about the important reason why people in America are overweight. She explains the mistakes that Americans make about how to…
In the article "Escape from the Western Diet," Michael Pollan argues how the western diet is a bad eating diet and talks about ways to break this eating habit. He believes that we eat these type of foods because they are cheap, fast, and easy. He emphasizes that we should avoid eating foods that have been so over-processed that they no longer have their natural components. He also adds how American spend less than half an hour preparing their meal but, spend more that an hour eating it to elobrate on his point that American do not eat healthy foods.…
Encumbered by highly advanced agricultural inventions, the American diet has evolved into a dilemma producing detrimental health affects for our nation. While a plethora of food choices, from chicken nuggets to Twinkies, may appear to be a dietary utopia; the technological advancements in the food industry have produced food-like products rather than authentic food. This nation-wide eating disorder has kept Americans in a cyclical process of attempting to achieve a thin figure while still gaining pounds. Through the course of his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan investigates four meals: a meal from McDonalds eaten in the car, an organic based meal from Whole Foods, a meal from an organic, sustainable farm, and lastly, a meal that Pollan hunted and gathered himself.…
Issues with the “Western Diet” In “Escape for the Western Diet” by Michael Pollan, he discusses how our current diet is partly to blame for our obesity and increases in disease as a nation. He looks at multiple different theories that a large number of diseases affect those who eat the Western diet yet disagrees with many points that the theories say. Pollan also argues that, due to the fact we as a whole are taking less time to prepare our meals, the quality of said meals decreases. One of Pollan’s points is to eat smaller portions of food, and in the food that we do eat it should contain a majority of fruits and vegetables with a minimal intake of meat.…
Pollan also quotes that dieting shouldn’t be focused on nutrition but the overall diet, including fats, sugars and processed food. His argument is that if there were more available fresh foods and less fast food places people would be more willing to stop eating the western diet and eat a healthier diet. Pollan’s writing should affect everyone eating the American diet. His writing is about our health and wellbeing. Knowing this information can provide us with a better understanding on how to diet and how to get out of the western diet.…
The Western diet can simply be described as a very new and unhealthy way of dieting. Pollan believes that Americans need to figure a way to escape the Western diet due to its negative effects and unhealthy features that can greatly damage…
In Pollan’s essay “The American Paradox”, he defines the American Paradox and discusses how to fix the American diet. He explains how too many unhealthy Americans are preoccupied and obsessed with nutrition facts and the idea of eating healthy. He also mentions that the food industry, nutrition science, and journalism are the parties that have been the cause of this confusion about eating healthy. He thinks that worrying about nutrition facts and living a so called “healthy” lifestyle is the wrong way Americans think about eating today. I agree with Pollan’s argument because focusing on nutrition facts and dietary foods can mislead the consumer and create some health problems.…
In the beginning of Escape from the Western Diet, author Michael Pollan introduces the thought that nutritionism is one of the most used sciences used to categorize food today. Moreover, Pollan’s main claim is that nutritionism and the Western diet are not forms of dietary rules that we should follow. Pollan himself writes, “Scientists can argue all they want about the biological mechanisms behind this phenomenon, but whichever it is, the solution to the problem would appear to remain very much the same: Stop eating a Western diet” (Pollan 421). To me, I believe Pollan makes a very convincing point to stop eating a western diet, due to the examples he shares. All throughout the article, Pollan shares his various opinions on the western diet like how it leads to western diseases and thoughts on how the medical and food industries are affected.…
In the documentary Super Size Me, narrated and directed by Morgan Spurlock, Mr. Spurlock sets out to see just what effect eating fast food can have on a person’s health. Numerous questions are posed during the film, so it is difficult to determine the exact thesis of the argument. After filtering through all of the information, I determined the main point of the argument to be that McDonald’s knowingly provides unhealthy food to Americans and wants us to eat as much of its food as we can, therefore making us fat. Mr. Spurlock sets out on an experiment with himself as the subject, in which he eats nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days. Although Mr. Spurlock does present evidence that fast food is unhealthy, I am going to focus on all of the inconsistencies and fallacies in his argument.…
Food, a “nourishing substance that is eaten, drunk, or otherwise taken into the body to sustain life, provide energy, promote growth.” (Dictionary.com) The foundation of all life substance is food. To deprive ourselves from these essential nutrients would immediately lead towards advert repercussions and quite possibly cease life as we know it. People everywhere understand the importance of food, but our mistake was not acknowledging this crucial aliment.…
Although both writers come from different perspective of dieting, Maxfield did not have first-hand education on nutrition and that did not affect her essay. Also Maxfield is not as credible to this subject as Pollan is, but her usage of expert testimonies gives her credit to write on this subject. Pollan usage of scientific logic lacks a clear explanation of why people should cut out the western diet, thus taking away from his credibility and forces him to use an emotional approach. However, Maxfield usage of logic is better explain and generalized her emotion approach not to just a particular society. Overall, Maxfield’s essay uses rhetorical strategies evenly throughout her entire essay which makes it more…
I have always struggled with the amount of food I consume good or bad. Since I was just a young boy there has always been food in my life. When I say in my life, I mean that I for one have never had a struggle to find food eat. Some of my earliest memories were going out to eat every Friday night with my family. From childhood to adulthood, there has always existed healthy food and unhealthy food around and this will probably remain the case until I die.…