What you eat is your business radley balko

LIU 1

Jiaqi Liu

English 1A

Ms Robledo

11/30/16

Have It Your Way

Food is people’s fountainhead of energy, it provides people power, passion and

even happiness. However, abnormal eating habits will bring up unexpected health

problems. A credible website called The Children's Aid Society states that “according to

the New York City Department of Health, 43% of public elementary school students are

overweight and 76% of New York City children are not getting the recommended five

daily servings of fruit and vegetables.” To be more precise, one in three children is

obese but whose fault is it? Who should take the responsibility? In David Zinczenko’s

article, “Don’t blame the Eater,” he believes that the fast food industry is to blame

because fast food restaurants are everywhere in town. In a lot of families, parents are

busy working so their kids’ only choice for meal is often only fast food restaurants. On

the other hand, Radley Balko has a different perspective on who is responsible for the

health and obesity problem in the United States. Instead of believing that fast food

industries should take the responsibility, he argues in his article “What You Eat Is Your

Business” that obesity responsibility should be an individual problem instead of the

government’s. Both authors make valid argument on the topic but I agree with Balko’s

argument that obesity is people’s own fault.

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Everyone has their own choice and will, if people have firm determination, they

will never fall into temptation. If you want to be healthy you must manage your own

eating habits. Just like Radley Balko, a blogger who writes about civil liberties and the

criminal justice system for the Washington Post, said “Bringing government between

you and your waistline”(Balko 466) wasn’t right, then he also said that "This is the wrong

way to fight obesity. Instead of manipulating or intervening in the array of food options

available to American consumers, our government ought to be working to foster a sense

of responsibility in and ownership our own health and well-being" (Balko 467) customers

should be focusing on their own food choices, instead of eliminating other people’s food

options. In his article, "What You Eat Is Your Business", government, instead of

controlling what can be sold to consumer, should spend more time on letting consumers

be responsible for their choices. For example, the government banning soda machines

in schools and passing the measure HH in the city of Oakland city which added taxes

on soda and junk food is doing too much. No matter what, if the kids or adults want

soda they will do everything possible to get it and sneak into school or be willing to pay

extra for it. How people make their own food choices should be the term that they need

to pay attention to, it’s not efficient and it won’t help a lot if people choose to force the

government to regulate fast food, because eventually no matter how things change

people will buy food from their own pockets.

Fast food restaurants’ characteristic is to serve their foods at a really fast speed,

and it’s convenient to the people who only have small amount of time to eat their meals.

However, it can not be substituted for a normal meal. Fast food lacks nutritive values

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and it does not pay attention to how much sustenance a single person should be getting

in each meal. “Drive down any thoroughfare in America, and I guarantee you’ll see one

of our country’s more than 13,000 McDonald’s restaurants. Now, drive back up the

block and try to find someplace to buy a grapefruit” (Zinczenko 463). He said in the

article, “Don’t Blame the Eater”, therefore, the reason why people are eating fast food is

because it is everywhere in town, compared with a farmer’s market. This is one of the

reasons why some people believe that it is the fast food company's fault that they cause

obesity. Despite fewer farmer's market than fast food restaurants, there are plenty of

grocery stores like Safeway, Target, and lucky in every town, that sell a lot of healthy

choices of product, rather than fast food meals. Zinczenko also points fingers at the fast

food packaging we consume. He said “Complicating the lack of alternatives is the lack

of information about what, exactly, we’re consuming. There are no calorie information

charts on fast-food packaging, the way there are on grocery items, Advertisements don’t

carry warning labels the way tobacco ads do” (Zinczenko 464). He complains about the

lack of information on the food package that would directly influence people’s choices.

In the article, “Don’t blame the eater,” he also conveys that the companies don’t tell the

consumers how bad the food can make their body and lead to all kinds of disease and

obesity. Some people believe that their advertisements should be like the cigarettes,

telling consumers that they might get cancer if they smoke, but there are still big

populations of people who still smoke, even knowing they will die from it. So this shows

that the people who are too lazy to get real food are still going to buy and eat the fast

food.

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Overall, I agree with Radley Balko’s perspective it is people’s responsibility to

manage their own health so it is not the fast food companies’ fault that causing the high

obesity rate in the United States. For example, children can not make a decision yet

whether the food is healthy or not, the only thing they care about is whether the fries

and chicken are tasty or not. At this point, parents should be the one that stand up and

teach their kids the right eating habits and introduce their kid to playing a sport to

maintain their body healthily. Otherwise, kids would easily fall into and suffer from

corpulency. Parents always use excuses like “busy” and leave food money at home for

their kids. What can a kid get without a car? Obviously, the only option for them is to

walk up the block to get the cheap fast food meal for dinner.

Taking care of kids is always the responsibility of parents, they can’t have a

thought that expects kids to buy healthy food on their own, and I don’t believe parents

are too busy to the level that they could not spend 30 minutes at home to cook for their

kids. All they have to to prepare a healthy meal is just some simple steps, wash rice and

put it into the cooking machine and wash some vegetable and throw them into a pan. In

the article, “Cooking With Your Children” by ​Elaine Magee​, she points out that “cooking

with your kids can help get them interested in trying healthy foods they might normally

turn their noses up at.” This can show the importance of parents being at home and

cooking food for their children.

Some researchers have done research to show many of the food policies

designed to improve food choices, and many of them require calorie information on

restaurant menus and taxing sugar-sweetened beverages. They don’t always produce

http://www.webmd.com/elaine-magee

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the intended results, so a lot of times it is people’s fault not to pay attention to the

details. Lastly, I also believe that it is very easy to find healthy food that is just as

inexpensive as the fast food. And as well, if you want to be healthy you must eat normal

healthy meals, if you eat fast food and want to be healthy it is most likely impossible.

Just like you can not sell the cow and drink the milk at the same.

Fast Food companies should take care of the food materials that they are

choosing, quality should be the first factor that they need to determine, not quanty.

However, people should have more responsibility for their food choices. Nowadays,

there are thousands of fast food options they can choose which means the demand of

the fast food industry is high. People can limit the consumption of fast food by

themselves, but it’s impractical to totally eliminate it, blame it and deprive the right of

other people to choose it. Parents should pay more attention to their kids, and adults

should have more self-esteem about their food choices. Fast Food is not the only

reason that leads people into obesity. On top of that, to keep healthy is a long-term

goal, developing healthier eating habits, or even running miles a day should be the

factors that people should think about. Fast food is a minor reason for people having an

unhealthy body. Consumers should be their own masters It can only be people taking

control of their food, and not food taking control of them.

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Works Cited

Balko Radley. “What You Eat Is Your Business” ​They Say/I Say:With Readings​. Graff,

Gerald, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel K. Durst. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2009.

Print.

"Nutrition | The Children's Aid Society." ​Nutrition | The Children's Aid Society​. Charity

Navigator, n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2016.

Zinczenko David. “Don’t Blame the Eater” ​They Say/I Say:With Readings​. Graff,

Gerald, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel K. Durst. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2009.

Print.

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