You Don't Have To Be Smart To Eat Them

Summary:

            The visual by Khalil Bendib is basically stating how the United States doesn’t make it necessary for food companies to label foods with GMOs and the people are oblivious to what they are eating.  It also brings up the fact on how people in Europe are aware of what their food has and get to decide whether they’d like to eat it or not.

Analysis:

            The visual makes claim on how people in America don’t really know what they’re eating and are oblivious to what their foods are made of due to food companies not labeling them. The three men represent Americans who don’t know any better and don’t really question the food. The misspellings in their dialogue help to further assert the claim of how it’s better to be “dumb” in order to eat the engineered food.  The corn present on the plate with the label “Cattle Grade” indicates on how the corn isn’t truly corn but is made with something else. The bird helps to bring in light of how Europeans are aware of what their foods consist of because of food labeling and get to have a decision of whether they’d like to consume a certain food product or not. Bendibs overall argument is that America should start having food companies label foods with GMOs because the people have a right to know of what they’re eating.  He also expresses the fact that people aren’t smart enough to question of where their food comes from which is bad for them and the country as a whole. He tries to argue that it’s important for people to be “highly educated” as they are in Europe.

 Bendib, Khalil. "Engineered Foods." OtherWords. 2011. Web. 06 Mar. 2016. <http://otherwords.org/engineered-food-cartoon/>. 

Current Event #3

Summary:

In Andrea Donsky's article "What's so bad about GMO's? Top ten reasons to avoid them", she expresses to her readers that they are most likely consuming food which are GMO based without knowing, due to the lack of labeling by companies. She then lists off and explains the effects of these harmful GMO’s on the human body.

Analysis:

The purpose of this article is to inform people about genetically modified organisms and their effects. By informing more people about this issue, Donsky is able to thoroughly inform her readers, who may not even be aware of this situation, and allow them to take some sort of action. One important claim she makes about the lack of labeling food is that " [the attempt of] federal regulations on labeling foods that contain GMO's, none have passed" which allows for food companies to not have to legal inform their consumers of what they’re actually eating, and wont risk the fear of losing clients. But the biggest risk of these companies not telling their customers by not labeling the food, is that the GMO’s may badly impacts the health of individuals and cause a risk of people getting very sick and they wouldn’t even be aware of it happening. She exclaims the fact that GMO’s have only been in our system since the mid 90’s and people don’t know the true harm of these GMO’s on our bodies since they haven’t been out long enough to do thorough testing. This leaves the consumers to have no knowledge and no real proof of what these GMO can cause and what the effect on their bodies can actually be. Some known negative impacts they have include "pesticides...cancer...environmental...super weeds...patent issues..." but it doesn’t disregard the fact that there could always be more that have not been discovered yet. By choosing all the negative impacts and effects that GMO’s have, Donsky can argue for her readers to not consume the GMO’s and allows them to be aware of what is going into their bodies and gives them reason to fight for GMO labeling so no one cane be ignorant of what they can cause.

 Work Cited

Donsky, Andrea. "Top 10 Reasons to Avoid GMOs." Top 10 Reasons to Avoid GMOs. Naturally Savvy, 9 Sept. 2014. Web. 28 Feb. 2016. <http://naturallysavvy.com/eat/whats-so-bad-about-gmos-top-ten-reasons-to-avoid-them>. 

Thoreau on Simplicity

The importance of simplicity is one of Henry David Thoreau's main recurrent themes in Walden. He claims that the needs and wants of an individual should be few, and encourages stripping away the luxuries and comforts of life down to the bare essentials. To Thoreau, simplicity allows one to live life to fullest. His ideas in the 19^th century can relate to the 21st century because in today’s society, people focus more on materialistic items in life which prevents people from really appreciating it.

Thoreau expresses that many of the materialistic items we find “important” only act as obstacles that don’t allow mankind to reach their highest potential. By “simplifying” our possessions and living off the four most essential items as he claims are, “Food, shelter, clothing, and fuel,” illustrates Thoreau’s ideas of living life to the bare minimum and allows an individual to appreciate life without commodities which aren’t really needs but wants. There are people in today’s society that have more than they need and only care about what they wish to have without acknowledging all that they do posses.

Many people disagree with his idea of living simply because they work hard for what they earn and should be able to do what they please with it. Given that fact, yes it is true that people work hard for what they have, but they don’t need to spend their money on unnecessary items just to flaunt to others. This is why there is always constant competition to see who is better than whom and people just end up hurting each other just to prove who is the best with their materialistic items.

If we lived simply as Thoreau suggest, it would eliminate the competition of materialistic items and allow people to appreciate life for what it is.

Current Event Journal #2

In the article, "GMOs: Facts About Genetically Modified Food" by Marc Lallanilla, he argues that GMOs are overall safe and better for the people; that people are merely influenced by others to believe that they cause harm, when it reality its very rare. He does this by listing the pros of cons of GMO's and states, "However, many scientific organizations believe the fear-mongering that runs through discussions of GMO foods is more emotional than factual." At first, Brody seems to be on the neutral side of the situation, not really giving an indication of where he stands. But as the article progresses and more information is laid out, his view can be seen as supporting GMO since he always seems to counteract an issue with proven facts from the NLM (National library of Medicine), as well as points out how GMO can help the farmer and consumer. By doing this, he is able to support his claim and further develops it by bringing in politics. He states how the government passed a law that required foods to only be marked as GMO if the nutritional values were changed due to the GMO, if not, then no label was required. He does counter act this by stating that different state legislatures are trying to pass laws that require all foods to be labeled by claiming that people have a right to know. But his rebutal is clear, foods would have a hard time coming into the states because major companies will have a hard time dealing with the food labeling issue. But overall, he states the battle for or against GMO foods will be a constant and will go on for a while. 

Works Cited:

 Lallanilla, By Marc. "GMOs: Facts About Genetically Modified Food." LiveScience. TechMedia Network, 11 Jan. 2016. Web. 07 Feb. 2016. <http://www.livescience.com/40895-gmo-facts.html>. 

Current Event Journal #1

In the article, “Fears, Not Facts, Support G.M.O.-Free Food” by Jane E. Brody, she argues that genetically modified foods shouldn’t be banned because they may benefit the public more than it will harm them. Brody supports her argument by giving facts that show how genetically modified foods can actually improve certain foods and help people fight diseases. One example of this would be when she states, “another gene inserted into rice increases it’s iron content to fight iron-deficiency anemia,” which further helps to develop her argument on how the health benefit facts of genetically modified food are stronger than those of peoples’ fears. Overall, Brody is going against genetically modified foods being banned. She uses many facts that support her argument and further help to develop her claim of how people are scared of trying these new improvements, but the fact that these new food improvements can be beneficial towards people shouldn’t be overlooked.

Works Cited

Brody, Jane E. "Fears, Not Facts, Support G.M.O.-Free Food." Well Fears Not Facts Support GMO Free Food Comments. NY Times, 8 June 2015. Web. 31 Jan. 2016. <http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/08/fears-not-facts-support-gmo-free-food/?_r=0>.

Rhetorical Precis for Anger: An American History

In Stacy Schiff’s Opinion editorial article, “Anger: An American History” (December 18, 2015) NY Times, she suggests that people’s “suspicion of, fear of, and hatred of others” has always been a part of Americas history, and allows the reader to imply that without acknowledging our history, we cannot move forward and become a better nation. Schiff first does this by giving historical facts on how prejudice of others began by those who founded America (The Puritans) before it was even a nation; she then reinforces her main claim with supporting details of how throughout history people have blamed certain groups of people as a whole just to justify that their way of life is correct and should be lived only that way and she does it by constantly bringing up the idea of religion; and to conclude she implies that history does indeed repeat itself and it’s up to us to acknowledge and educate others that if we don’t change the way we think, our perspective of others won’t change and she supports this with Trumps quote on how we have to think smarter in order to end. Her purpose is to show her readers that if we are unable to learn from our wrongs in the past and accept the fact that America is not as exceptional as everyone believes it to be, we will never overcome the need of hating a certain group of people because its different from our own or they might “harm” others way of living. She seems to have more a liberal audience in mind because she addresses the fact of how America's perspective on groups of people should change or else as a nation we won't be able to prosper, and shows that history has proved that nothing good comes from prosecuting groups of people which certainly repeats itself if people aren't educated about it.