Annotated Bibliography

Veraja

Balko, Radley. "What You Eat Is Your Business." They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in
Academic Writing, with Readings. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. 395-99. Print.
Balkos main point is that people as well as the government should mind their own
business when it comes down to what America decides to consume. He supports his
statement on what people eat should be their business by explaining that when we make it
a public issue, it becomes a problem that affects everyone because we are essentially
paying for obese Americas health care; which in turn doesnt persuade anyone to become
healthier when they dont need to pay for their heart medication out of pocket. He brings
in opposing views by giving examples of how the government is continuing to put
restrictions on food, and going as far as changing school lunches. Balko believes the best
way to alleviate the obesity public health crisis is to remove obesity from the realm of
public health. Meaning, there is nothing more private than what we choose to put in our
bodies and it should not become a public matter because we are then forced to pay for the
consequences of those choices.
Maxfield, Mary. "Resisting the Moralization of Eating." They Say / I Say: The Moves That
Matter in Academic Writing, with Readings. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. 442-47.
Print.
Mary Maxfield makes a significant point about why America is obese, in her essay,
Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating. She makes a point that there is
a lot of confusion throughout America and how we should eat. Americas way of dieting
is eating differently or eating less than what they normally consume. The important thing
Americans need to remember about eating is not how much or how little you eat, but the
quality of the food youre eating. When Maxfield, an author with a degree in creative
social change talks about American culture and the way we process being healthy, she
claims, American culture resists the scientific facts, that people can be fat and healthy,
in favor of a perspective that considers fatness fatal and thinness immortal. It can be
true that someone can be fat and healthy, but it does not mean that an individual is
healthy because their diet consists of Cookies, soda, and junk food. You can be healthy at
any state, but it is proven that you put your health more at risk with weight. The problem
is not how much Americans eat, but rather the food that they are eating is not healthy
food, so their efforts go unnoticed, it is more important to eat healthier rather than to eat
less.

Pollan, Michael. "Escape from the Western Diet." They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in

Annotated Bibliography
Veraja

Academic Writing, with Readings. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. 434-41. Print.
Pollan shows us all of the different theories the number of diseases associated with the
Western Diet. However, Pollan disagrees with these theories and argues that both the
food and health industries are to blame for this. Denis Burkitt suggests that the only way
to avoid this cycle is to go backwards to the diet and lifestyle of our ancestors which
Pollan interprets as eat foods that are less processed. Pollans answer to this is to
simply eat smarter and he goes as far to suggest that we ourselves are part of the
problem because we do not spend enough money or time in terms of preparation on
food. Pollan makes some excellent points in this and I do agree that taking shortcuts in
order to cut time when preparing food decreases its quality. But Pollan fails to point out
several issues with our diet. Preservatives are as much of a problem as processed foods,
and he does spectate on this issue by saying The foods environment is just as important
as the foods quality, he fails to explain that preservatives are in nearly everything.
Mostly plants is not a safe of option like Pollan would suggest, it has the same denaturalized process as the meat industry. In conclusion while Pollan makes a strong and
persuasive argument; there are some problems in what he is suggesting, it is just a bit too
simplistic.
Warner, Judith. "Junking Junk Food." They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic
Writing, with Readings. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. 400-05. Print.
Judith Warner explains how government is trying to regulate the amount of junk food that
Americans consume, and that it will be a long and difficult process to change our culture
of eating, but it can be done using psychology to manipulate how we see our food. She
explains things that have recently happened with using politics to try and regulate
consumption, and also makes an example of Americas history to explain how eating
habits have changed throughout the years. David Kessler, the former U.S. Food and Drug
Administration commissioner and author of the 2009 book, The End of Overeating:
Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, offers his standpoint on the best
way to get Americans to eat healthier, stating that, Cultural change is what offers the
best hope for transforming how and what Americans eat., it was a shift in cultural
attitudes, not laws or regulations, that led Americans to quit smoking. In the space of a
generation, he says, cigarettes stopped being portrayed as sexy and cool and started to
be seen as a terribly disgusting, addictive product. Because of how emotionally
fulfilling food is; its very hard if not impossible, to stigmatize unhealthful eating. Kessler
says, that social norms could change: that huge portions or eating processed foods
loaded with sugar, salt and fat, for example, could come to be seen as socially
unacceptable. Warner also makes it very apparent that if we dont solve this now it will
haunt us for years to come.

Annotated Bibliography
Veraja

Zinczenko, David. "Don't Blame the Eater." They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in
Academic Writing, with Readings. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. 391-94. Print.
In his essay, David Zinczenko is sympathizing with obese children in America, who
blame fast food companies such as McDonalds for making them fat. He explains how
easy it is for teenagers to access unhealthy fast food, and how hard it is to find healthier
alternatives. Zinczenko states in his essay, Drive down any thoroughfare in America,
and I guarantee youll see one of our countrys more than 13,000 McDonalds restaurants.
Now drive back up the block and try to find someplace to buy a grapefruit. The lack of
healthy alternatives is helping create an epidemic in type 2 diabetes, in teenagers, due to
over consummation of unhealthy foods which is almost unavoidable. He argues that the
nutritional information is either unavailable or hard to understand. Even meals such as
salads that seem healthy can include an alarming amount of calories.