Food label analysis

Assignment: Write an essay in which you analyze the label from a processed food. Your main point should answer the question: does this label give you enough information to make a good choice about whether to eat this or not?

#NOTE VERY IMPORTANT: Please write it about peppsi and juice

Length: 5 pages (double-spaced, 1 inch margins, 12 point font).

Source texts:

• Food label, including the nutrition facts, ingredients list, and advertising. This is the text that you are analyzing.
• Kingsolver (2014) Taking local on the road.
• Preiss (2016) Some immigrants in New York prefer to slaughter animals themselves.
• Schlosser (2006) Why McDonald’s fries taste so good.

Use these texts to support your discussion of food issues:

Genre: This is an argument based on an analysis. You should have a clear main point, supported by reasoning and evidence that you reveal through your analysis.

Structure: Please use the common three-part structure. In the introduction, lay the groundwork by explaining what food issues are important to you, and then answer the question: does this label give you enough information to make a good choice about whether to eat this or not?

In the body, discuss the ingredients, explaining which are clear and which are not. Explain whether the other words on the label clarify anything or not. Explain what other information you would want to have before eating the food.

In the conclusion, restate your main point, and push a little further to make a suggestion about a broader issue, such as food labelling, Americans’ food buying choices, or the food industry.

Title: Compose a title for your paper and center it at the top of the first page.

Referencing: Please use in-text citations with accompanying references on a reference page.

How to proceed:

• 1)Think about:
• 2)Collect a label from a processed food that you eat. Read the ingredients list and consider whether it gives you enough information to understand what is in the food. If you do not understand all the words, google them. Then, ask yourself some questions related to the things you care about, for example:

• a)How you decide what you buy to eat, and specifically, whether you pay attention to the ingredients and food labels to make your decisions.
• b)Issues related to food that might affect your decisions, such as artificial ingredients, unhealthy ingredients (name them), use of pesticides and herbicides to grow crops, treatment of animals raised for food, genetic engineering of food, way in which animals are slaughtered, whether crops are grown locally or not, etc.

• a)Are there any chemicals listed? Do you understand how they were made? Why they were put in the food? What they are?
• b)Are there any plant ingredients listed? Do you know if the plants were genetically modified? Grown with pesticides or herbicides? Do you know where they were grown

Read the other words on the label used to market the product, for example, fresh, organic, non-gmo, gluten-free, natural, etc. What do these words mean? Google them. See if you can find a government definition for them. You might try “FDA” (US Food & Drug Administration) and/or “USDA” (US Department of Agriculture) as keywords to add to the word you are looking up. Do these words help clarify the ingredients, or are they merely advertising with no precise meaning?