Food Inc Rhetorical Analysis

Upton Sinclair was born on September 20th, 1878. Him and his family moved to New York City in 1888 due to his father being an alcoholic. His family was extremely poor, unlike Sinclair’s grandparents, who were extremely wealthy. He claims that because of his experiences with the lifestyle of being poor and wealthy, it turned him into a socialist. Sinclair entered New York City college at the age of fourteen. By writing stories for the newspapers and magazines, he was able to help pay for college. He then moved into his own apartment and supplied his parents with a regular income by age seventeen. In 1902, Sinclair married Meta Fuller and began writing novels. After the discouraging effect of his first three novels, Fred Warren found something special within Sinclair’s writing. Warren told Sinclair to write a novel about immigrant workers in Chicago meat packing houses. Julius Wayland gave Sinclair five hundred dollars to help him start his writing. He wrote The Jungle after seven weeks of researching. The Jungle got rejected by six publishers. Sinclair then decided to publish it himself, and received orders for nine hundred and seventy-two copies. This sparked interest to Doubleday, an American publishing company, which

Author Michael Moss attempts to educate the general public about the creation of processed foods in his article, “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food.” The article was published in The New York Times on, February 20, 2013. In his article Moss explains to the public how the food created and how it can also cause serious health problems. In order to get his point across Moss list multiple facts and he also conducts interviews with people who are in the junk food industry. Using the rhetorical appeals of logos, pathos and ethos Moss’s ideas can be interpreted very easily. His audience can understand all of the health issues that come from eating junk food thanks to Moss’s effective use of all three rhetorical appeals.

“‘If they’ve got a pulse… we’ll take an application’” (Schlosser 162). Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the American Meal by Eric Schlosser and The Jungle by Upton Sinclair convey corporations treating the public inhumanely. The books discuss how the companies will fix their prices, the lengths they will go to avoid unionization within their establishments, highlight how their employees are struggling to survive on their low wages, and provide a look into the risks of working for these corporations.

In David Freedman’s essay How Junk food Can End Obesity, Freedman makes the claim to policy arguing that instead of demonizing processed foods, Americans should instead support the idea and production of healthier processed and junk foods. He calls on the public to recognize that while many products on the market these days are labeled as “wholesome” and “healthy”, consumers should learn to become aware of the fat and calorie content in these products because many times they have the same- if not more- fat and calorie contents as that of a typical Big Mac or Whopper. In his essay, Freedman primarily places blame on the media and the wholesome food movement for the condemnation of the fast and processed food industries saying, “An enormous amount of media space has been dedicated to promoting the notion that all processed food, and only processed food, us making us sickly and overweight” (Freedman), he further expresses that this portrayal of the

According to Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, the U.S. Department of Agriculture carries out programs of research, education, conservation, forestry, marketing, credit, export expansion, food distribution, production adjustment, grading and inspection, and development of rural areas ("Agriculture, Department of."). Nearly 100,000 people make up twenty-nine different agencies within the USDA. These people do their part to participate in the agricultural act of eating that Wendell Berry talks about in The Pleasures of Eating. Wendell Berry argues the importance of eating responsibly using the following rhetorical devices: pathos, ethos, repetition, and imagery.

Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle is a novel, which affected the food industry in 1900’s but also in America today. People have learned over the years the truths about the food industry, revealed through Sinclair’s detailed evidence. Sinclair meant to aim at the public’s heart but instead he shot straight at their stomachs. One would easily be convinced to never again buy or eat meat again. Fortunately, people have seen changes from 1906 and have been currently trying to repair the Food Industry. The food industry has better improvements yet; it still needs a thorough cleansing. Although food production has bettered in the last 100 years by its treatment of workers and government’s oversight, it has had some adverse effects like company’s protection

In the article, “The Pleasures of Eating”, author Wendell Berry shares his knowledge of the food industry and discusses the act of eating as part of the agricultural process. Berry asks deep questions in his article that will make the readers question what they are putting into their homes and into their bodies. Most Americans, according to Berry, can be categorized as passive consumers that are basically allowing food industrialist to brainwash them by means of advertisement. He argues ,“They pay, mostly without protest, what they are charged” implying that the consumers do not even question what additional cost, such as transportation, might have added to the product .The article provides an interesting perspective on consuming food and Berry shares multiple ways that the passive consumer can become more educated on food.

Zinczenko’s article was written with the rhetorical stratedgy of pathos in mind. Zinczenko strategically uses emotional pathos through his example of obesity in children. Children are innocent in tone, therefore helping him explain that they are innocent in spite of the manipulation of the fast food industry. The author presents the issue of the lack of nutrition information in fast food. He’s not dissing the fast food industry; rather, he is stating the problem at hand that should be taken care of. He sympathizes with the fact that he too was once a kid whose two daily meals were from typical fast food restaurants. (892) Zinczenko argues that America has failed to give a solution or better alternative, and because of that fact, has

What is described appeals to the readers emotions, especially when they realize they will eventually eat this meat. This helps convey the tone of disapproval because it is so gross. Furthermore, the author appeals to pathos when discussing workplace safety in slaughterhouses. He stated, “Meatpacking is now the most dangerous job in the United States. The injury rate in a slaughterhouse is about three times higher than the rate in a typical American factory.” The author uses pathos by shocking the reader with a unfathomable statistic on injuries in the workplace. He went on to state, “A brief description of some cleaning-crew accidents over the past decade says more about the work and the danger than any set of statistics. … Richard Skala was beheaded by a dehiding machine. … was pulled into the cogs of a conveyor belt at an Excel plant in Fort Morgan, Colorado, and torn apart. … fell from the top of a skinning machine while cleaning it with a high-pressure hose, struck his head on the concrete floor and died. … had his head crushed by a pork-loin processing machine… “ This description of events happening to the cleaning crew of the slaughterhouses is

Throughout American history, propaganda pieces have been used to sway the public opinion on one matter or another. The famous Federalist Papers were used to sway the early American public to ratify the Constitution. The Civil War also heavily relied on propaganda to recruit soldiers and boost morale. At the turn of the 20th century, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle was written as a propaganda piece on socialism, however, it was remembered for its cometary on the ethics of the meat packing industry. Although its goal of turning America into a socialist society was forgotten, it served as one of the most efficient propaganda pieces on the meat packing industry. A century later the documentary Food, Inc. was produced for the same purpose of drawing attention to the food industry as a whole. Although monopolies on the meat industry have increased after being broken up and food workers treatment is similar to those in The Jungle, there are now more government regulations in place, ensuring food safety to a

Upton Sinclair, a socialist, and muckraker rallied public outcry for labor equity, he launched a consumer movement through the midst of a harsh stockyard strike from unfairly payed wage workers, socialist writer. He is best known for his novel, The Jungle which underlined the devastating exposé of Chicago’s meat-packing industry. A protest novel he published in 1906, the book as a result was quite the shocking revelation of incomprehensible labor practices and unsafe working conditions that were held in Chicago stockyards. The description’s spoken in Sinclair’s book issued the truths about diseased and spoiled meat processes that were not regulated until he exposed them. Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the harsh conditions and exploited

The life pursued by the average young person in America is fast paced and scheduled to the point of breaking. As time has progressed this time stretched life style has impacted the need for food that isn’t cooked at home or even at restaurants that cook with traditional methods. This coupled with the swelling number of households with either a single parent or two working parents has increased the reliance on the fast food industry and in turn increased the overweight and obesity rates in the country. In his article “Don’t Blame the Eater,” David Zinczenko addresses this topic and places the blame not on those partaking in these delectable dinners, but in the hands of the fast food industry and their lack of understandable labeling. Zinczenko’s argument is valid and strong due to his equal use of ethos, logos and pathos.

In the twentieth century, the government of the United States began taking more of an interest in the food industry. Soon after the twentieth century began, the government realized the harsh conditions in the factories and how unsanitary they were so they went from favoring big businesses to passing laws against the cruelties they did and regulating the items sold in the United States. The government’s regulation of the food industry in American history has evolved from them ignoring the problems and letting factories do what they wanted in the nineteenth century, to them having full control over the food industry in the present-day by passing laws and creating organizations such as the Meat Inspection Act, Pure Food and Drug Act, and the Food

Food corporations look to those who have recognizable credentials. By explaining that she lacked sufficient background knowledge and is a well-informed as a common person, Miller proves that she has nothing of value that they can learn. In her article, she mentions that she “cautiously raise a subject that has concerned me of late: less than five miles away, some children don’t have enough to eat” (2). Her experience with families lacking healthy food has only recently become an issue of worry for her, and thereby is not qualified to present new solutions to the problem. Through failing to build up a credible relationship with her target audience, Miller’s argument becomes a waste and is an inefficiency. Companies hire those with years of experience or a college degree in the subject, since Miller is lacking both nothing she could say or show in her argument will effectively persuade food corporations. Once her target audience sees her as uncreditable and inexperienced the rest of her argument will struggle to persuade them. Miller fails to build loyalty in her audience which will limit food corporations’ desires to bring about

Do you remember those commercials on television that claimed you could feed a starving child in Africa for just 50 cents a day? In Robert Paarlberg's article "Attention Whole Food's Shoppers" he reminds readers that not everyone in the world is as fortunate as those who live in developed countries and that it seems those living in more prosperous nations have become more apathetic towards the issue of hunger and food production in less developed countries. His use of pathos and ethos make readers feel more connected to the issue, as well as his use of logos to educate the reader while offering practical solutions to the issue ultimately make his argument effective.