Obesity America's Enemy No. 1 Rhetorical Analysis

The author of Obesity – America’s enemy No. 1, Jake Steinfeld, uses careful and precise wording to make the audience understand and believe the claim at hand. He stays within the aspects that contain him and within what he believes in. This makes his argument more believable. Picking apart the article with rhetorical analysis a reader can see how Steinfeld makes his claim acceptable.

In the op-ed piece, Jake Steinfeld, responds to the problem of opioid and the obesity epidemics. He first, brings up the opioid problem and makes a statement that leads to the overall point of the story, the obesity epidemic. His article indirectly focuses on parents with young kids, teachers and schools to help stop this obesity problem. Since Steinfeld is writing for the deseretnews.com he has to worry about his language and attitude toward the claim. He cannot just say whatever he wants or his article would not have seen the light of day. He may have had physical constrains such

as length of the article and time to make the article. The article could have been longer or shorter which would have created a different point of view overall. At the end of the article it says that Steinfeld is a chairman for the National Foundation for Governors’ Fitness Councils. The way he writes and his voice with in the article has to be acceptable by the other chairmen and the foundation itself or he could lose his spot as a chairman. Another constraint would be the opioid epidemic and how it is seen in the eyes of Americans as a current event. If many people did not know or see the opioid problem as a large problem, then the first two paragraphs would have been taken out and changed. All of these constraints lead to a certain way Steinfeld wrote this article. Without these constraints, maybe the article would have been different all together or could have stated a different claim.
Steinfeld structures his argument in a precise way that stays with in his constraints, audience and exigence. His purpose is to stop childhood obesity. He does this by claiming that obesity is an epidemic, like the opioid epidemic, that can be stopped by helping childhood obesity. In order to make this claim, Steinfeld assumed the audience knows some information. He assumes that there is an opioid epidemic. Without this assumption, again, the leading part of the article would have been changed. He also assumes that stopping child hood obesity will help decrease adult obesity and there is an overall obesity problem. The audience may not know that helping childhood obesity will decrease adult obesity from the start, but as they read he states the facts that lead them to this assumption being true.
He uses logos, ethos and pathos to overturn the counter claim. Logos is the appeal of reason to the audience. Through out the article, Steinfeld states facts and statistics that make his argument seem better than the counter argument. In the article he states obesity related diseases kills 2.8 million annually making his argument seem important (Steinfeld par.1). He does this through out the whole piece making the numbers and facts stand out so his point of view critical.
Ethos makes the audience believe the writer by making them believe they are trustworthy and knowledgeable. In the fourth paragraph of the article he says, “I know from personal experience” and in the fifth paragraph he states he has 40 years of experience getting people fit making the reader think he is reliable and knows what he is talking about (Steinfeld). Ethos creates the reader to accept what they are reading, in turn, making the argument more agreeable.
Pathos, or the appeal to emotion, is what most commercials use to persuade the audience. Most of the pathos in the article deals with children and sick people. Steinfeld says he had a stutter, zero confidence and was obese as a child appealing to the pity emotion of the audience (Steinfeld par.4). In paragraph five and eight he states children are the future and “children are our most precious resource” which just pulls on the heart strings of the audience (Steinfeld). Overall, his article is framed by focusing on the children’s futures which makes his argument even more pathos orientated. Audiences or readers want children to have a healthy positive future so when Steinfeld attacks children futures he is making the audience feel something.
The other articles in class have had some ideas that are similar.

In the book Fat by Deborah Lupton, she deals with the idea of what is normal. Meaning that no one really knows what is morbidly obese, obese, overweight, normal and underweight. No one can really know if there is an obesity epidemic. On page four of the book Fat it states, the increasing incidence of illness and diseases means there are more overweight and obese people making it an epidemic (Lupton). This idea that just because disease and illnesses have increased that means obesity has increased is crazy. There are so many different factors that could lead to these illnesses to be present not just obesity. Lupton also states that giving labels helps people see things better. On page eight she states, “bodily characteristics should be given this label” meaning obese people are given this label so we can see them clearly. Lupton again brings up the point that no one can say exactly what is overweight, obese or fat so there should be no

label.
Another reading from class out of the book Food by Deborah Holdstein and Danielle Aquiline an excerpt called Can’t Stomach It: How Michael Pollan et al. Made Me Want to Eat Cheetos by Julie Guthman has an overall idea that if a person wants real change they need a policy change. This is a counterargument against what Steinfeld says. In the end of the excerpt Lutpon says, “they can teach how and what to eat as if you could ‘change the world one meal at a time’ without attention to policy” gives her overlying message that changing policy means real change (133). This means that changing one kids life at a time, as Steinfeld has stated, would not work. This is one counterargument that Steinfeld did not mention in his article making his article less believable.
Rhetorical analysis can lead to the reader changing their mind and relying on the article for a change of mind or it can lead to the reader not believing the claim stated in the writing. Either way, it depends on how the author writes and expresses their voice throughout the piece.

Works Cited
Aquiline, Danielle, and Deborah H. Holdstein. Food: a Reader for Writers. Oxford University Press, 2015.
Lupton, Deborah. Fat. Routledge, 2013.
Steinfeld, Jake. “Op-Ed: Obesity - America's Enemy No. 1.” DeseretNews.com, Deseret News, 30 Apr. 2018, www.deseretnews.com/article/900017279/op-ed-obesity-americas-enemy-no-1.html.