Essay topics: “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 Cafe, an old vegetarian restaurant, are still
making a modest living, but the owners of the new House of Beef across the
street are millionaires.”
A Balanced Diet is Still
Popular
In this argument, the author asserts that
people in general are not as concerned as they were a decade ago about
regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses. To solidify the conclusion,
the author cited the fact that various high-fat chesses are available in a
long-established store, the Heart’s Delight, which specializes in organic fruit
and vegetables and whole grains. The author also points out that the old
vegetarian restaurant is still making a modest living while the new House of
Beef pulls in millions of dollars. However, the argument is severely weakened
by three critical flaws on the representation of a single store, the causes of
financial conditions and the reason behind people’s choice of restaurants.
Most conspicuously, it’s unconvincing to
draw the conclusion from insufficient evidence of the emergence of cheese in one
fruit-and-vegetable-selling store. The change of commodities in a single store
can hardly represent the entire market and chances are that it is just
accidental event. For example, maybe more and more blue-collars or athletes
move into the neighborhood and consequently raised the demand for high-calorie
food such as cheese. Statistics shows that there were more than 300000 food
stores in the US, but without referring to further data, the author unreasonably
generalized all the other restaurants with one sample, which may be an
exception from the normal circumstances.
In addition, the author commits the fallacy
of casual relationship between the financial condition of restaurant and the concern
of people on their diet. The depression of the vegetarian restaurant may not
necessarily arise from the lack of concern with diet. Perhaps the vegetarian
restaurant suffers from poor management, or a few new vegetarian restaurants
start occupying the shares of the local market. Similarly, the booming of new
House of Beef may be caused by other reasons such as adequate financial support
or tasty-but-cheap food. However, the author indiscreetly neglects other
possibilities that may lead to the current financial conditions.
What’s more, the assumption that food
served in restaurants can accurately reflect concern on intake of red meat and
fatty cheese is gratuitous. An online survey conducted by Yahoo in 2013
revealed that more than 70% Americans ear more times at home than at
restaurants and in these cases, eating outside sometimes means treating
themselves to a big meal. So they are more likely to choose the House of Beef
to enjoy the fine-cooked beef rather than the everyday tomatoes and potatoes. So
even if the House of Beef sells more, one can almost deduce nothing from the food
served at restaurants, which can’t reflect people’s concerns accurately.
In summary, the conclusion that people
are less concerned about monitoring their intake of red meat and fatty cheese
is invalid and misleading. More specific evidence should be provided on the
changes of goods in other stores, the indeed cause of the different financial
condition and what people really eat in most of their time.