Saturday, September 12, 2009

Group 4- Amy, Michael, Amber (Compos)

We favor the views of the article "Being Fat is OK" by author Paul Campos. His main arguement is that it is okay to be overweight because this does not mean you are unhealthy. He quotes the New England Journal of Medecine saying, "the data linking overweight and death are limited, fragmentary, and often ambiguous." (They Say/I Say 208). With no real evidence that losing 20 pounds will make you less at risk for disease, Campos suggests that the thin equals healthy perspective is a great scheme of the $50 billion-a-year diet industry. Between 90-98 percent of diets fail. This means all that extra money and time spent on a dieting products is worthless. In the reading “Obesity: Much of the Responsibility Lies with Corporations,” the author Yves Engler states, “obesity is one of today’s biggest health crises -1 in 4 of the world’s 4 billion adults are overweight and 300 million are clinically obese” (TheySay/I Say 172). The author in our reading states that the federal government puts guidelines on a person’s weight using a BMI chart which is highly inaccurate. The BMI (Body Mass Index) "theory" says if you're a certain height you should weigh a certain amount to be healthy. What proof is there that anyone falling in the "overweight" rating are less healthy than someone 10 pounds lighter of the same hieght who rates in the "normal" category. If more than 1/4th of adults are overweight or obese, it seems a lot more normal than the BMI chart implies. Most people who have a "problem" with weight have it because their bodies are not programmed to keep that weight off. In the article "What You Eat Is Your Business" author Radley Balko states that the government should be focusing on implimenting a sense of responsibility and ownership of our own health and well-being (They Say/I Say 158). We know that someone who is fat is more likely to be poor in America so it is safe to say that people poor makes you more likely to be fat. It costs more to eat "healthy" so maybe the government should work on making healty food more available to more people.

Works Cited
Campos, Paul. “ Being Fat Is OK.” Jewish World Review (2001). Rpt. in They Say/I Say with Reading. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein and Russel Durst. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. Print.

Engler, Yves. “Obesity: Much of the Responsibility Lies with Corporations.” Z Magazine(2003) . Rpt. in They Say/I Say with Reading. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein and Russel Durst. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. Print.

Balko, Radley. “What You Eat Is Your Business.” Cato.org. Cato Institute. 23 May 2004. Rpt. in They Say/I Say with Reading. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein and Russel Durst. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. Print.

3 comments:

  1. I do not think that your group’s writing was the most effective because of multiple different reasons. The first thing you could improve on is please make sure you spell check your papers. It is especially important to make sure you copy your quotes down exactly as they are from your sources. The second thing is it is also good to make sure that you check your writing over for grammatical errors. Overall I think that your paper would be much more effective if you where to make sure you check your writing before you officially post, turn in, or publish writing of some kind.

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  2. I think your paper was very persuadable considering the topic. It’s hard to honesty believe that people really think “Being Fat is Okay?” I feel that your group did a good job referencing to the author in your project. I did notice you had periods some times before and after the citations or in both places. Next time I would proof these before posting. Overall, I thought this was a very good intake of what the assignment was.

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  3. I liked your post about the article. I thought that you brought up some very valid points when referencing the BMI charts, and how inaccurate they are. I know that many people when reading an article will say that being overweight is okay, but in reality, most people do not. I felt like you argued the point effectively.

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