Greg Critser Critique

Critique for Greg Critser's "Too Much of a Good Thing"

In "Too Much of a Good Thing," Greg Critser, author of Supersize, pushes his opinion on the rising epidemic of obesity in America. Critser cites the devastating statistics on this rise in size to further the impact of his point. By stating the many problems that amass to an obesity epidemic, Critser is able to propose his remedy to the masses. Critser conveys that stigmatizing overeating is all that society must undertake to solve this tragedy. Critser is careful to distinguish between the sin and the sinner, but does not apologize when pushing the fact that we need to teach children to eat less. Citing statistics on the shocking increase in the percentages of childhood obesity, Critser

efficaciously argues that parents can help avoid obesity in their own homes by more closely monitoring the diets of their children, serving moderately sized portions, and limiting snacks.
Throughout his essay Critser often refers to gluttony, one of the seven cardinal sins recognized by the Catholic Church.

He points out that the reason our predecessors never struggled with this problem is gluttony and overeating were "vilified as on of the seven deadly sins" (Critser 162). Therefore, people were scared away from overeating because it was an ungodly sin. According to the author of "Seven Deadly Sins" there are two elements to eating and hunger. The first is the natural instinct to eat when hungry, meanwhile the second being the love of taste and indulgence, is what is up to the judgement of the consumer (Seven Deadly Sins). With this being known, Critser's point of gluttony is said more towards the second element of eating where one overindulges in the love of food and becomes out of control. In Gerard Anthony Riley’s Study on the effects of stigma and blame of unsafe sex among Ghanaian citizens, he found that the more informed a person was, the less their chances were for contracting HIV/AIDS (Riley, 1). This leads to the idea that as we begin to educate people more and more on the topic of overeating, fewer people will participate in this activity. Both authors effectually support and convey that too much food is truly a bad thing, furthermore stating that Critser is correct in his claims on

obesity.
A few times in "Too Much of a Good Thing," Critser suggests that to remedy obesity we must stigmatize overeating. His suggestion for the remedy is to think of overeating appear as a deadly sin again, exactly as is conveyed in the article “What are the Seven Deadly Sins.” We must consider overeating equally bad as the likes of unsafe sex or smoking (Critser 161). Author Gerard Anthony Riley of the article "Do Stigma, Blame, and Stereotype Contribute to Safe Sexual Behavior?" found that in his study of Ghanaian young adults, the more informed population had a lesser percent who had contracted HIV/AIDS. This being said, Critser effectively states the point that stigmatizing the causes of obesity will most certainly help to impact the overweight/obese population in America.
Throughout his entire article, Critser effectively conveys that overeating is firstly an unhealthy habit and secondly, needs to be stigmatized before it will ever start to wane as an epidemic in the American society today.