Preview

What Food Say About Class In America By Lisa Miller Analysis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1032 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
What Food Say About Class In America By Lisa Miller Analysis
Food has become part of our social status. Those who have money get to enjoy healthy organic options, while those who live on food stamps and low incomes get sugary packaged foods that are harmful to the body. In “What Food says about Class in America,” Lisa Miller effectively captures the American people’s attention through descriptive imagery, alluring metaphors, and repetitive facts but fails to convince her target audience of the food corporations that a change is needed. Even though her argument is persuasive to some, it fails to fulfil its intended purpose of bringing change by convincing those who control the market to make the change.
Opening her article, Miller describes her family’s breakfast habits to relate herself to the people.
…show more content…
Just because we make good quality fruits and vegetables cheaply available does not mean people will eat them. With this uncertainty making changes would be a high risk, low reward situation which is not a good setup. By including this quote in her argument, Miller undermines her argument and proves that this solution may be …show more content…
Her argument strives to make changes at the corporate level by selling high quality food for lower prices but the rhetorical strategies do not have the correct effect. Miller starts her argument off and portrays herself as a regular person, thus losing her power to convince the audience to listen to her ideas. In addition, what maybe a sob story to most people is exactly how food corporations make money which does not help her argument. Next, because she failed to create credibility with her audience, her facts and statistics are not effective. Finally, food corporations are not willing to partake in risky business proposals that either way will negatively impact the company. Miller’s argument fails to be compelling and does not convince food corporations of the necessity for change, thus being

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    Before 2001, the American food production industry was able to conduct their businesses in a shady manner going undetected. Americans had turned a blind eye to where and to how their food was being processed. In his efforts to solve this issue by raising awareness to adults across the country, Eric Schlosser wrote, Fast Food Nation, to expose America to the truths behind the food industry. He clearly conveys his case with vivid descriptions, personal narrations and excellent exemplification that leave a strong impact on any reader. Through the use of multiple rhetorical strategies Schlosser successfully evokes the desire for change from his audience.…

    • 1254 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    1). In Hungry for Change, a 2012 film from James Colquhoun, Laurentine ten Bosch, and Carlo Ledesma that posits that the processed food diet is the root of our ails, Dr. Alejandro Junger says, “The problem is that we are not eating food anymore, we are eating food-like products.” Ten years ago, according to the National Restaurant Association (2016), the top five food trends were bite-sized desserts, locally-grown produce, flatbread, and bottled water (p. 1). Local sourcing, gluten-free cuisine, ethnic cuisine, and nutrition were the top five of the fastest-growing food trend in the last 10 years (National Restaurant Association,…

    • 468 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Soul Food Summary

    • 1236 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Just think of upper class and lower class foods. When thinking of upper class foods you may think of lobster, caviar, steak, organic pesticide free fruits and vegetables, grass fed meats, the freshest seafood, wheat and grain breads, fine wines, and other traditionally opulent and expensive food items; the best of the best is theirs for the taking, or, rather eating. Lower class foods often thought to involve junk foods, fast foods, white breads, and industrially farmed fruits, vegetables, and meats; foods that are cheap and available are theirs to feast on. These food items are used to signify social class and create boundaries. It's out of the ordinary and almost seems like rule breaking to see lower income people eating organic vegetables and a fresh grass fed steak or lobster dinners, as it's also out of the ordinary to see wealthy upper class people eating Pop-Tarts, Doritos, or going for a food run at McDonalds. These foods are used to unify the social classes, but also serves as a divisions to keep the social classes in their place. Lower class foods are notably low in nutrients and are generally unhealthy. These unhealthy foods lead to a large amount of children going hungry or malnourished due to poverty and lack of access to healthy foods (Fitchen "Hunger, Malnutrition, and Poverty in the Contemporary United States"), and the urban foodscapes in black and Latino communities are riddled with processed and unhealthy…

    • 1236 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Food Deserts: A Case Study

    • 1283 Words
    • 6 Pages

    homeless or jobless and question themselves on how they will gain their next meal. The regulations and food examination that the USDA and FDA implement are to secure the quality of food products and that they pass the law requirements. Although this results in great irony, due to the fact that the government is focused in creating healthy and nutritious food products concerned about the health of the consumer, that they forget to distribute quality food to those who can’t afford it. For example, public schools have low funds and tend to have contracts with companies that sell sugary beverages and starchy artificial snacks, they usually have pouring right contracts. This results harmful in children’s health, over the years they develop obesity,…

    • 1283 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Rhetorical Analysis

    • 279 Words
    • 2 Pages

    David Zinczenko is the editor-in-chief of Men’s Health magazine and the author of numerous best-selling books. Zinczenko is a man known for his work; his work and credibility shines bright because he has contributed op-ed essays to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today. He has also appeared on Oprah, Ellen, 20/20, and Good Morning America. The fact that he is so accomplished in the area of eating healthy shows just how credible he is when it comes to discussing fast food vs. the eater. Zinczenko believes that the fast food industry is partly at fault for the growing rate of obesity. Although Zinczenko’s background and accomplishments gives us the evidence we need to know in order to trust his judgments, his emotional way of getting his points across make a difference as well. In the beginning of the essay, Zinczenko tells us about himself and how he grew up with troubled parents who weren’t together, and with very little options of what to eat for lunch and dinner every day. He explains that his options were mainly fast food, which caused him to be an overweight teenager. In other words, he uses his story of himself as a teenager growing up with family problems to draw people in and get them to sympathize with the overweight teenagers and get them to see that it is not all their fault and that it is, in fact, partly the fast food industry’s fault. One of his final arguments is that without warning labels on fast food industry products, we will see more sick, obese children and more angry parents.…

    • 279 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    What You Eat Is Your Business: Americans, Personal Responsibility, and Food America, we know it as the land of the free, but the rest of the world knows seemingly knows it as the land of the unhealthy. In the year 2016, the CDC Reported that about 36% of Americans is obese. We as Americans have abused our freedoms on what we eat and how we live our lives, because we chose to ignore the responsibilities that come with these freedoms. Our ignorance does not come without a price, in the article “What You Eat Is Your Business”, the author, Radley Balko, addresses how our nation’s government is responding too this seemingly avoidable epidemic.…

    • 599 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Schlosser’s sense of humor and word choice set the all-inclusive tone throughout the book. His presentation of his argument is straightforward and out in the open. Although, Schlosser gives opportunities to side differently, his overall standpoint is potent. His intent in writing the book is to challenge people to consider the consequences of eating at McDonalds or any other fast food chain. He gives us insight on what really is going into our food.…

    • 744 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Omnivore's Dilemma

    • 687 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Pollan’s solution is simple. “All we need to do is empower individuals with the right philosophy and the right information to opt out en masse” (Pollan 260). Regardless of how promising it may sound, however, where our food comes from is not going to change overnight. Major companies such as Coca-Cola have bought out our legislation a countless number of times and will continue to do so for as long as people continue to feed them money. Unless a sharp, major nationwide movement is started, there will never be an “American Food Revolution.” Despite the efforts put forth by many food orientated communities, the availability, low cost, and popularity of terrible industrial foods will time and time again grant victory to the…

    • 687 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Society must look at other obstacles including cost. Tracie McMillan is the author of The American Way of Eating who also wrote the article “The New Face of Hunger” in which she points out how the government subsidizes processed food and crops that are not as healthy, but does not subsidize the healthy food needed. McMillan explains that, “In 2012 [the government] spent roughly $11 billion to subsidize and insure commodity crops like corn and soy, with Iowa among the states receiving the highest subsidies. The government spends much less to bolster the production of the fruits and vegetables its own nutrition guidelines say should make up half the food on our plates. In 2011 [the government] spent only $1.6 billion to subsidize and insure "specialty crops" -- the bureaucratic term for fruits and vegetables” (McMillan para 26). That lack of subsidy on speciality crops causes the prices to be higher to cover transportation costs; resulting in members of society not being able to afford fresh produce. It is unethical for the government to ask for healthier options be served in places like schools when in turn the prices of wholesome food are still too high for many budgets to afford. In short, no one should be denied the right to eat healthy regardless of economic background. Everyone should have equal opportunities to receive healthy food and live a healthy…

    • 1939 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    To the average consumer, eating has now developed into well beyond an agricultural act, declares Wendell Berry. Apparent in the audience of his lectures on the decline of farming, American citizens are unable to recognize the existence of food beyond the food industry—the world of fake, processed food. Ask any individual from where their food comes and they will answer, “the grocery store.” Stirring Berry to anger, he exclaims that food begins with life, plant and animal; if food begins in the laboratory, the results more accurately categorize as experiments rather than food. Michael Pollan strongly supports this claim by stating, “what reductive science can manage to perceive well enough to isolate and study is subject to change, and that we have a tendency to assume that what we can see is all there is to see” (p. 11). What this means is that food plastered with health claims can only assure the consumer their soon-to-be purchase has been on…

    • 534 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    This article describes many causes of hunger and unhealthy eating habits in the United States that explored in documentary “A Place at the Table”. The author explains that poverty is one of the major contributing factors of obesity because poor families cannot provide healthier meals. I will use this article to support the opposition to Bittman’s right that he assumes way too many things about food deserts. For example, that people in food deserts have a way of transportation to healthy supermarket and grocery stores that they simply choose fast food instead of cooking. Which Sifferlin exposes is not true.…

    • 1017 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In a section his book, Michael Pollan focuses on the corn industry. He finds of the “forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket...more than a quarter of them now contain corn ” Although these cheap foods can conveniently be found at any supermarket, constantly eating this food is destructive to ourselves . America is currently the world leader in obesity and it is because we heavily rely on corn to fatten our animals or to become the main component of processed food. And because the “cheap corn [keeps] flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest”, families in poverty will have no choice, but to eat the cheap yet affordable foods, leading to obesity.…

    • 420 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    To those who share the same viewpoint as Berry will applause and commend this essay because it goes hand in hand with their sympathetic and bias views on the American food industry. However, the “Urban consumer”, which is his intended audience, will find the call to action that Wendell Berry so easy puts it a lot easier said than done. Berry’s approach to the issue puzzles me because he goes about in a way that is critical and extremely bias on the issue instead of being understanding and methodical about the problems his audience is facing along with failing to establish common ground with his intended audience. He criticizes before offering any solution to the problem. Throughout this essay, Wendell Berry will come across as illogical to the readers he attempts to persuade by overgeneralizing his assumptions and reasons in “The Pleasures of Eating” along with providing a lack of supportive evidence to solidify his assertions. This use of oversimplification broadens the categories within the essay which do not adequately qualify his ideas in a persuasive manner. This in turn distances and weakens Berry’s credibly to the reader. Therefore, he does an inadequate job in expressing his ideas and solutions to the “Urban…

    • 1262 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    On one hand, the point is important because consumers are expected to play a crucial role in choosing healthy foods, as well as demanding for accountability among the manufacturers (within the food industry) (Center for Ecoliteracy 7). On the other hand, the observation should be criticized in such a way that Kenner spends a significant amount of time making anecdotal assertions and expressing strong claims but little or no data is used to support the ideas.…

    • 1595 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    This just confirms a horrible truth: the food companies are very much aware of the lack of nutritional value in their products, yet they continue to sell them to the less informed public. While Moss says the business men are able to “rest easy” when it comes to their weight, I find it difficult to believe that all the people in the room can “rest easy” morally. Do they realize that they are taking advantage of people who do not know any better than to eat what is placed in front of them at their local grocery stores? How can the middle and lower classes possibly resist the delicacies wrapped so artfully in packaging specifically designed to grab their attention? It’s like taking candy from a baby. Only in this scenario, the food giants are feeding the baby candy. The baby would represent the denizens of America, although I’m sure there are literal babies out there who are being affected by the obesity crisis. I find it upsetting to think that while America is being diagnosed with heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and cancer (just to name a few illnesses caused by a poor diet) the individuals responsible are out with their personal trainers, rewarded for the increase of diseases by receiving an increase in their income.…

    • 4955 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Good Essays