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TAKING SIDES ANALYSIS
REPORT (LONG FORM)
Name: Isaac Johnson
Course: Human Biology
Book: Taking sides.
Issue number: Three
Title of issue: Can an overemphasis on eating healthy become unhealthy?
1. Author and major thesis of the Yes side.
Lindsey Getz:
Healthy eating is typically a positive thing, but taking it to the extreme can have detrimental effects.
2. Author and major thesis of the No side.
Chris Woolston
Eating a balanced diet that focuses on grains and vegetables will lead to better health than not doing
so.
3. What fallacies of question-framing are made by the authors of the text?
The question was posed fairly well. My one problem with it was that it seemed to give off a strong
bias toward the idea that being to healthy is a problem, rather than just presenting the issue.
4. Briefly state in your own two facts presented by each side.
Orthorexia is not a clinically recognized disease
Many dietitians are unfamiliar with orthorexia
A western diet has been found to significantly increase the risk of coronary heart disease.
Between 1986 and 1998 the number of overweight white children doubled.
5. Briefly state in your own words two opinions presented by each side.
The American diet is fatty, unbalanced, and oversized.
The western diet is a recipe for disaster
We should not generate a fear of certain food types
Eliminating trans-fats, and dyes can lead to malnutrition
6. Briefly identify as many fallacies on the Yes side as you can.
This was well written and very convincing, but after scrutinizing carefully some deep fallacies do
come up. First, there are, of course, cases in which healthy eating becomes such an obsession that it
becomes detrimental, but the problem there is the OCD nature, not the health food. People with
obsessive-compulsive issues often take things like cleaning and organizing strands of their carpet to
such extremes that it negatively impacts their life, yet there is nothing inherently unhealthy about
keeping a clean problem, therefore no one cries for greater awareness of carpet cleaning diseases. In
the same way there is nothing inherently unhealthy about eating healthy foods. The rare problem is
in the obsession and should be dealt with under the OCD umbrella and not as a food disorder. Next,
the idea that a healthy diet can be a danger to a person’s social life if they stop going to certain
restaurants with friends is like saying that an alcoholic that is trying to sober up should not avoid
bars because it could impact their social life. Yes it could have an impact on social life, but the
benefits clearly out weigh the costs.
7. Briefly identify as many fallacies on the No side as you can.
The no side of this issue makes me wonder if the writer even read the prompt. Was this essay written
as a response at all? It reads more like a general plug for healthy eating than a response to a very
serious issue. It never brings up the idea of eating habits being too healthy at all, just lists a few dos
and don’ts and states the benefits of healthy eating. This was disappointing to me because there are
very good reasons why ‘Orthorexia’ should not be created as an official disease and why raising
awareness of it might not be an appropriate course of action. This entire issue, background, for, and
against, all read as if hostess commissioned them. The background is biased, the for is strong , and
the against is less than weak.
8. All in all, which author impressed you as being the most empirical in presenting his or her thesis?
Why?
Clearly the for side was far better than the against. It was very compelling and well thought out.
9. Are there any reasons to believe the writers are biased? If so, why do they have these biases?
As stated earlier, it seemed to me that every writer was biased toward the idea that ‘Orthorexia’
could be a problem. This is because the background attempted to convince the reader as such, the for
was very well done, and the against didn’t address the issue at all.
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10. Which side (Yes or No) do you personally feel is most correct now that you have reviewed the
material in these articles? Why?
I feel that the No side is correct, but not because of anything that the No side said, rather because of
the flaws in the logic of the yes side. There is a serious danger in spreading a fear of healthy eating
and saying that there are no foods that should be cut completely out of the diet. That is that there is a
rampant and real disease of addiction to processed and saturated foods that has completely engulfed
our society. Spreading a fear of healthy eating will undoubtedly give those who might have tried to
change an excuse to keep feeding their addiction. It is absolutely disgusting to me that despite not
being a real disease, Orthorexia can commonly be found under many eating disorder entries,
whereas I have never even seen a scientific name for the very real disorder of eating too much
unhealthy food. How many people, I wonder, have died because their diet is too unhealthy compared
to those who have died because their diet is too healthy?