Chapter 16 and 17

In chapter 16, Michael Pollen begins to discuss the idea of "good to eat, good to think" through the three main factors of taste, cooking, and appetite. Pollen first brings up the subject of specialized eaters and how animals make their food choices. The monarch butterfly for example, notices milkweed as food and everything else in the environment is not food. I found this to be very interesting because it allows many animals to only focus on one food group. If this particular food group goes away than their animal group will go extinct, unlike the human and the rat who can survive off basically anything that comes their way. Pollen that continues to talk about taste, and how sweetness, bitterness, and disgust are major factors that show what we can and cannot eat. From there, the idea of cooking is brought upon by Pollen, in which he states that, "cooking, one of the omnivores most cleverest tools, opened up whole new vistas of edibility" (Pollen, 293). I would have to agree with this because before the time of cooking, the foods that we ate had no way of bringing out all the nutrients that certain provisions had to offer. Appetite is the last idea that Pollen had to offer, and we notice this by the growing amount of eating disorders in today's society. Harvey Levenstein sums this up perfectly by saying, "that taste is not a true guide to what should be eaten ; that one should not simply eat what one enjoys" (Pollen, 300).

Chapter 17 goes on to talk about the ethics of eating animals. Many people believe that the idea of eating a once lived animal is completely immoral. That's why many people in today's world have decided to make the switch from a carnivore lifestyle to the vegetarian or vegan diet. For me personally i do not see the problem in eating a perfectly cooked steak but for other people they see the steak as cow that once a leaving being and it brings them away from that diet. I agree with Pollen on the fact "that humans have been eating animals for tens of thousands of years without to much ethical heartburn," so why stop now (Pollen, 305)?

Chapter 4 and 5: They say i say

I found chapter 4 of "They Say I say" to actually be fairly helpful to me as a writer. The chapters main focus is now moved to the "I say" stage of a persons writing, which allows you to know make your own argument in response to what another person has said. From this, I am now able to realize what the three components to this style are; which is, agreeing, disagreeing, or a combination of the both. An example of this would be if you were writing a paper in which you needed to state your opinion on a controversial topic. For instance, if the topic of your paper was abortion, than you would need to state whether or not you agree or disagree to this issue. If the writer doesn't clearly state their side of the argument than the paper has no purpose towards it.

In chapter five the focus is to determine how a reader knows when the author is moving from what "they say" to what "you say." This can be a difficult task for most writers because some writers tend to confuse the reader into who is saying what in the paper. I feel like a good way to go around this is to apply quotes to the writing because it gives the reader the idea that the issue being discussed is coming from another source. Also, it could be a good idea to rephrase your ideas so the reader understands who is talking more clearly.

essay 2 citation

http://www.systems.wsu.edu/scripts/wsuall.pl?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ffh&AN=2010-01-Aj0170&site=ehost-live

Blog 2 chapter nine

Chapter nine of the Omnivore's Dilemma mainly talks about organic food in today's society. The Chapter starts out with Pollen explaining his experience while shopping for whole foods and how the labeling and price of an item can really influence whether or not the customer will buy it. "In the industrial food economy, virtually the only information that travels along the food chain linking producer and consumer is price" (Pollen, 136). I would definitely have to agree with this statement because whenever I'm shopping, price is the major factor that influences whether or not I will buy an item. Pollen than goes on to talk about the Industrial side of the organic Farming Industry. "Being every organic TV dinner or carton of industrial organic milk stands a certain quantity of land that will no longer be doused with chemicals, an undeniable gain for the environment and public health" (Pollen, 158). From this, it makes it sound that these farmers are doing the world's environment a favor, but in reality they are the same men who applying toxic fumes to the environment through the use of their mega farms. Even though these farmers are helping out by going "organic" they are still bringing the environment down by applying toxins to their non organic farms. In the end, the organic farming industry is the healthy way to go for this world even though it is a hard decision for farmers to make when non organic farming is a much easier way to develop a profitable crop.