Help needed! "The following appeared in a magazine article on trends and lifestyles"

[aki]

Hi!

 

This is the first essay I have written in real conditions and I guess it's not terrific... My test is on Monday (6 June) so if anybody could help me with some feedback it would be great!

Thanks!

 

The following appeared in a magazine article on trends and lifestyles.

 

 

"In general, people are not as concerned as they were a decade ago about regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses. Walk into the Heart's Delight, a store that started selling organic fruits and vegetables and whole-grain flours in the 1960's, and you will also find a wide selection of cheeses made with high butterfat content. Next door, the owners of the Good Earth Café, an old vegetarian restaurant, are still making a modest living, but the owners of the new House of Beef across the street are millionaires."

 

 

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.

 

 

The magazine article emphasizes on the fact that nowadays people are not as concerned as they used to be about regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheese. In order to support this idea, the author compares the success rate of different kinds of restaurants and focuses on the fact that the most successful is indeed the one that is specialized in red meat. However, knowing the concerns of our society, it is hard to believe this argument especially without enough concrete sources.

 

 

First of all, as mentioned earlier, the content of the article sounds quite intriguing because most of the educated people in today's society are aware that a healthy life starts with a good nutrition. Most of the nutritionists even remind us that an excessive intake of red meat and fatty cheese is not good for health. Therefore, how can the author of the article conclude that people are not as concerned as before on these issues? In order to support this idea, the author of the article should probably mention some figures and even some scientific arguments.

 

 

Apart from that, one explanation to better understand this argument and eventually agree with it could be that the panel used to draw the conclusion was a panel influenced by specific socio-economic factors. Indeed, research has shown that middle class people that have newly acquired wealth tend to consume more and more red meat and fatty nutriments. This is partly due to the fact that throughout their childhood they did not have the occasion to consume that kind of food. Now that they are more at ease financially, they wish to enjoy by eating red meat or any other fatty food.

 

 

To conclude I would say that being an educated reader, it is hard to believe such an article. Only if the author includes more facts and figures, supported by strong sources, does the argument hold.