What to order?

Restaurants seem to be popping up all over Austin lately ranging in styles and presentations of their foods.  The presentation is often more important to me when deciding what to eat and I almost always select a meal that is accompanied by a picture.  The visual argument made by the menu is strong enough in convincing my stomach to order a “house favorite” or “specialty” item.  The picture that the menu creates reduces the uncertainty of the order that I have just placed and allows me to sit comfortably for the next fifteen minutes while I await my meal.  Nevertheless there are many other hints that are made by the restaurant when persuading customers what to purchase.

                Restaurants often have daily specials written out for customers as they first walk in order to plant seeds in the minds of these hungry individuals.  These daily specials are often times more expensive than regular items and can sometimes even be ordered any other day.  Another interesting point when customers are ready to order is the constant facial and verbal expressions that are made by the waiter or waitress.  Often times the waiter will give his or her input on the meals that taste the best, however, these usually are the most expensive meal as they know they will receive a greater tip for a high total price.  Adding to their verbal suggestions are the constant facial expressions that are made when groups are ordering.  If the waiter knows that item to taste great he/she may nod and grin at the customer.  When the item is less favorable often times the waiter is seen raising his/her eyebrows or shaking their heads from side to side.  These simple verbal and nonverbal messages persuade and argue to customers what food they should purchase.   Visuals arguments coupled with strong expert input makes leaves customers at the mercy of the restaurants will.

Cooking While on Tour

In “A Cook’s Tour”, Anthony Bourdain seeks to discover the very essence of foods. His tour across the world not only covers many countries as well as foods, but also the cultures that surround these foods. Cultures vary in terms of traditions and languages, but one constant is that we all must eat. Bourdain is able to discover the defining characteristic about each culture, which in fact is food.

America is always attacked for lacking a strong cultural tie to its nation’s food. Critics often claim that the United States can not decide which food is the “bread and butter” of the country. European countries all have unique styles in their food, as well as Asian countries and even South American countries, but America is well behind in its understanding of the value of food. Ask 10 strangers which food best defines the United States and you could very possibly get 10 different answers.

Anthony Bourdain’s book unintentionally sheds light on this chaotic cuisine tragedy that we face as he highlights the impact that culture has on food. After reading the first section of his book I ask myself if America will ever establish a food as its own. Should we be concerned with this confusion we have towards the food we eat everyday? Bourdain’s travels ignite not only his passion for food but they also put America on the burner to define its own unique style of food that can be supported by the culture.

IN With THIN

        Discussions often turn into arguments as people rarely understand the style that they are presenting their opinions in.  Style is a result of diction, tone, and even punctuation as all in some way or another effect the intended message.  In the film “THIN” the director choose to display the title in wiry, skinny letters to play off the theme of the movie.  Style also determines which facts will be argued and how they will be communicated.  The movie “THIN” brought to my attention the issue of whether it was harder for me to look at extremely skinny people or extremely obese individuals.  I believe that the style in which diets are presented is one that more detrimental to our bodies than helpful.

I have been convinced that the diets that circulate through the media are aimed at making men and women deathly thin as they do not define the term “healthy” or “fit”.  Pictures are never shown of individuals that have become mentally sick as a result of an eating disorder, rather the dieting industry uses pictures of unhealthy people to attract consumers.  I firmly believe that given a photo of an obese individual and a photo of a sickly thin person, the obese person would be more appealing.

The film “THIN” makes the observation easily understandable as it is tough to sit and watch without a queasy stomach.  Eating disorders are incredibly dangerous and life threatening, but it is interesting to me that we still argue and persuade women and men into living on the border of healthy and sickly.

Faulty Fatties

 In a society that values positive change it seems that only the waist sizes of Americans’ change these days.  The front pages of national magazines are littered with photos of celebrities and the latest scale reading plastered across their body.  Jennifer Love Hewitt felt the wrath of the media’s obsession with weight and appearance as her photo was the source of many talk shows for days.   The argument made does not stop here as people use the emotions of these celebrities in the pictures to help them label every person with a similar weight to be unhappy.

The argument that America is an obese nation is one of causality as we believe the weight problem causes more than just a change in clothing size but also for those who are overweight to be unhappy.  I have never heard of someone being completely unhappy for being overfed, however, I’ve heard my teenage brother loose it after going 2 hours without a meal.  This argument is one that uses one cause to create many effects.  The idea that an increase in weight will lead to an increase in unhappiness is flawed and would be declared as a false causality.

Weight may be an issue in America but until there is a scientific relationship between weight and happiness or any other emotion towards oneself, it will never be considered a valid, complete argument.  America may be overweight but it doesn’t mean that they can’t be “phat”.

Maybe We Can Judge a Book by its Cover

Vision seems to be the most influential sense on our minds immediate perceptions and beliefs. Magicians make a living out of confusing our minds by playing misleading our sense of vision. But, do book covers do this as well? In the novel Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the cover says a lot about the book and helps to foreshadow the argument that Kingsolver makes throughout the book. When presenting arguments of definition design issues such as “boldface and italics, headings or links in online text — can make a powerful contribution to how credible and persuasive it is” (Everything’s an Argument, 232). In this case the book conveys the importance of understanding nature and agriculture through numerous visual displays. The book cover is the color green, one in that we often associate with a healthy landscape. The paper appears to have been recycled expressing Kingsolver’s ideas on conserving and reusing our surrounding environment. Also the hands pictured on the cover are cupped holding beans as if to suggest that we hold the power and ability to produce our body’s nourishments. Does the cover completely convey the meaning of the author’s work? No, however the cover gives the novel a “focal point of emphasis in your definition” that the reader can look back upon to understand the general definition of the key concept (Everything’s an Argument, 232).

 

P.S. The verdict is still out as to whether this type of cover judging works on people, but for now it is not recommended.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Whip

                 Over the past few weeks I have learned many mind numbing facts about our food and what it may be doing to our bodies.  These facts seem to be unlimited arguing that the food we eat everyday is “eating” at us from the inside out.  From Michael Pollan’s to Barbara Kingsolver’s attack on the United States agricultural industry, it seems as if I’ve been let in on a secret blueprint of how exactly the world will come to an end.  Their stories and research make the idea of an Armageddon to be merely a bad Ben Affleck movie as it seems as though the world will not cease to exist from an end all royal rumble but rather as a result of corn as it has long stalked its prey.  Pollan has not discovered anything new, but more or less reiterated the phrase “the cream of the crop will rise”.  The crop has risen, too fast causing these authors to worry and bash the food they consume daily, however each author struggles to offer a universal solution out of this “dreadful” lifestyle.  Kingsolver moved in order to hide from the situation, but not all citizens of the world are able to migrate let alone afford untouched land.  Economically there seems to be no solution to this massive eating disorder and it seems as if there never will be an answer. 

                King Corn sheds light on the fact that this agricultural debacle is unstoppable and unsolvable.  The movie concludes with the dream of changing our food industry concluding as well.  These film makers have no real way to combat this dilemma, so we as viewers and eaters are left asking, “What now?”  The ideas and facts of Pollan, Kingsolver, and King Corn are all quite upsetting but it is the inability of these experts to produce a solution that is alarming.  As I finish my writing I too, (although I wouldn’t call myself an expert) leave readers with no answers to the problem and leave the crops to someone else. 

P.S.  Maybe someday we’ll get lucky and global warming will kill all the crops because I feel that it won’t be us to put these crops to rest.

P.S. Talk is cheap!

Arguing Organics

                 In Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, his arguments follow a similar format to those expressed in the readings from Everything’s an Argument.  Toumlin’s outline for his arguments are displayed throughout chapter 9 of Pollan’s book allowing his readers to understand what his research argues.  I have constructed an outline of Pollan’s argument bellow using Toulmin’s ideas of exactly how an argument is made.

Claim: “The organic label may conjure an image of a simpler agriculture, but its very existence is an industrial artifact” (137)

Qualifier: “So is an industrial organic food chain finally a contradiction in terms?  It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it is.  Of course it is possible to live with contradictions, at least for a time, and sometimes it is necessary or worthwhile” (183)

Good Reasons:  “The inspiration for organic was to find a way to feed ourselves more in keeping with the logic of nature, to build a food system that looked more like an ecosystem that would draw its fertility and energy from the sun.  To feed ourselves otherwise was ‘unsustainable’” (183)

Warrants: “The lot of the workers who harvested the vegetables and gathered up Rosie for slaughter is not appreciably different from that of those on nonorganic factory farms” (182)

Backing: “To a remarkable extent, farmers succeeded in creating the new food chain on their farms; the trouble began when they encountered the expectations of the supermarket” (184)

Evidence: “nature’s logic has proven no match for the logic of capitalism, one in which cheap energy has always been a given” (184)

“In many respects the same factory model is at work in both fields, but for every chemical input used in the farm’s conventional fields, a more benign organic input has been substituted in the organic ones” (159)

“Inputs and outputs: a much greener machine, but a machine nevertheless” (159)

Authority: “Michael Ableman, one of the self-described beyond organic farmers I interviewed in California, said, ‘We may have to give up on the ‘organic’…to be honest, I’m not sure I want that association, because what I’m doing on my farm is not just substituting inputs” (169)

Conditions of Rebuttal:  “The word ‘organic’ has proved to be one of the most powerful words in the supermarket: Without any help from government, farmers and consumers working together in this way have built an $11 billion industry that is now the fastest growing sector of the food economy” (136)

Response: “Agribusiness fought to define the word loosely as possible, in part to make it easier for mainstream companies to get into organic, but also out of fear that anything deemed not organic…would henceforth carry an official stigma” (134)

Holy Foods

Recently I stopped in at the Whole Foods located on the corner of 6^th and Lamar.  I had only been to this Whole Foods once in the past and I had recalled memories of the store before entering.  The unique style of the building is an immediate eye catcher as one must double take, making sure that they really are entering a grocery store.  The building immediately sends the message that this store is geared for the wealthier class is the architecture scoffs at the idea of being mistaken for an H-E-B.  This store is the company’s largest and includes unnecessary objects such as stoned walk ways and a patio that allows customers to enjoy their groceries before they start their decent into the parking garage.  Although these structures on the outside of the store may easily be viewed as excessive, they serve as a way to argue to customers to purchase their food at Whole Foods rather than another grocery store.

                The structure itself establishes ethos as consumers are persuaded to believe that the store is thriving with business if it can afford to be that enormous.  The red brick walls as well as the modern look are a much more appealing sight than that of the half stucco, half bird feces of the traditional H-E-B or Randall’s in Austin.  This modern, updated look allows Whole Foods to argue to its clients that the store’s cleanliness is important.  The positioning of the building also makes a statement in which it argues that the almighty, corporate officials are can shop there as it is only a few blocks from the center of downtown.

                The building also argues the logos of the store as it has a plethora of shopping carts stationed outside the store as well as the underground, cement castle used for parking one’s vehicle.  The shopping carts argue to the audience that the store is capable of hosting the entire city at once, while the decent down the parking garage conveys that everyone in the city is already there.  The logos or facts presented in number of shopping carts and parking garage spaces is easily translated into an argument persuading its customers

                These two argumentative appeals are easily noticeable when doing this rhetorical analysis however the pathos appeal is not as prevalent.  The Whole Foods building is an argument in itself in which customers are possibly unaware of its persuasiveness.  The building gives the company credibility and establishes a strong shopping atmosphere through its subtle, persuasive structures.

Who’s to Judge?

Throughout my few intelligent years I have often wondered as to how one becomes a critic for anything.  Whether it be a movie, music, or restaurant critic, what exactly are their qualifications for their “two thumbs up” or “five star” ratings?  Especially for restaurants it seems as if every critic is twice my age and constantly considering the “finer things in life” as they frequently discuss the flavorful nature of the item that they ordered at the café.  I can’t stand it when a waiter similar to my age tries to guess what I would enjoy eating by telling me their favorite dish which almost always seems to have an outrageous price tag next to it, (in hopes of a higher tip) let alone having someone my parent’s age tell me what I think would entertain my taste buds.

            In a book titled The Fearless Critic; Austin Restaurant Guide, food writers rate and review three hundred and ninety places to eat.  The book explains in depth a rating scale, in which they feel they have established some sort of ethos or credibility necessary to be able to tell me what I will and will not like about each and every restaurant in the Austin area.  In my attempt to satisfy the conditions of rebuttal or to “send a strong signal to the audience that [I’ve] scrutinized [my] own position and can therefore be trusted” I must admit that many of my favorite restaurants are on this books “top 50” (Everything’s an Argument, 73).  Although this still does not let the critics off the hook, as I cannot remember one time in which a total stranger has convinced me to drive across town and spend $50 on what he believes to be the best food ever.  This book provides weak ethos as the judges are more celebrities than they are food critics.  I am not quite sure as to when Bob Schnieder, John Kelso, or Mark Strama has ever been given an award for their magnificent casserole, however, their opinions are some how weighed into the final grading of each restaurant.

            I believe after reading the first few chapter of Eveything’s an Argument, that ethos is the “must have” in an argument in order to keep the attention of an audience.  Pathos as well as logos may lead one to act as a result of their persuasion, yet ethos establishes a credibility to allow the audience to become aware of a truth.  The text states that “before we’ll listen to others, we usually must respect their authority, admire their integrity, and motives, or at least acknowledge what they stand for” and with the absences of ethos we as an audience begin to question all the information that the speaker is sharing, as I do in the food critics book regarding Austin restaurants (Everything’s an Argument, 61).

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