English
Final Essay
Purpose of the assignment:
1. To demonstrate your ability to create and support a strong thesis statement
2. To craft a sustained argument in one of two styles: a persuasive essay on a debate topic or an
interpretive essay on an artistic subject of the student’s choice
3. To create paragraphs that are coherent and unified around one main point and that use
effective transitions
4. To integrate several quotations and paraphrases and to cite them using MLA format
5. To revise and proofread well in order to craft a polished final draft of your essay
Requirements:
1. Minimum of 8 pages (plus the Works Cited page at the end)
2. Makes use of a minimum of 5 well-vetted and reliable sources
3. Double-spaced, with 1-inch margins, typed in Times New Roman, size 12 font
Please see the final pages of this prompt for a sample essay
Evaluation:
Your paper will be evaluated according to the rubric on the next page:
Source: Hacker/Sommers (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016, 2014). This paper follows the style guidelines in the MLA Handbook, 8th ed. (2016).
MLA Research Paper (Harba)
Marginal annotations indicate MLA-style formatting and effective writing.
Harba 1
Sophie Harba
Professor Baros-Moon
Engl 1101
30 April XXXX
What’s for Dinner? Personal Choices vs. Public Health
Should the government enact laws to regulate healthy
eating choices? Many Americans would answer an emphatic
“No,” arguing that what and how much we eat should be left to
individual choice rather than unreasonable laws. Others might
argue that it would be unreasonable for the government not
to enact legislation, given the rise of chronic diseases that
result from harmful diets. In this debate, both the definition of
reasonable regulations and the role of government to legislate
food choices are at stake. In the name of public health and
safety, state governments have the responsibility to shape health
policies and to regulate healthy eating choices, especially since
doing so offers a potentially large social benefit for a relatively
small cost.
Debates surrounding the government’s role in regulating
food have a long history in the United States. According to
Lorine Goodwin, a food historian, nineteenth-century reformers
who sought to purify the food supply were called “fanatics”
and “radicals” by critics who argued that consumers should be
free to buy and eat what they want (77). Thanks to regulations,
though, such as the 1906 federal Pure Food and Drug Act, food,
beverages, and medicine are largely free from toxins. In addition,
to prevent contamination and the spread of disease, meat and
4/16
Opening research question engages readers.
Writer highlights the research conversation.
Thesis answers the research question and presents Harba’s main point.
Title is centered.
Historical background provides context for debate.
Signal phrase names the author. The parenthetical citation includes a page number.
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Harba 2
dairy products are now inspected by government agents to ensure
that they meet health requirements. Such regulations can be
considered reasonable because they protect us from harm with
little, if any, noticeable consumer cost. It is not considered an
unreasonable infringement on personal choice that contaminated
meat or arsenic-laced cough drops are unavailable at our local
supermarket. Rather, it is an important government function to
stop such harmful items from entering the marketplace.
Even though our food meets current safety standards, there
is a need for further regulation. Not all food dangers, for example,
arise from obvious toxins like arsenic and E. coli. A diet that is
low in nutritional value and high in sugars, fats, and refined
grains—grains that have been processed to increase shelf life but
that contain little fiber, iron, and B vitamins—can be damaging
over time (United States, Dept. of Agriculture and Dept. of Health
and Human Services 36). A graph from the government’s Dietary
Guidelines for Americans, 2010 provides a visual representation
of the American diet and how far off it is from the recommended
nutritional standards (see fig. 1).
Michael Pollan, who has written extensively about Americans’
unhealthy eating habits, notes that “[t]he Centers for Disease
Control estimates that fully three quarters of US health care
spending goes to treat chronic diseases, most of which are
preventable and linked to diet: heart disease, stroke, type 2
diabetes, and at least a third of all cancers.” In fact, the amount
of money the United States spends to treat chronic illnesses is
increasing so rapidly that the Centers for Disease Control has
labeled chronic disease “the public health challenge of the
No page number is available for this Web source.
Harba explains her use of a key term, reasonable.
Harba establishes common ground with the reader.
Transition helps readers move from one paragraph to the next.
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Harba 3
21st century” (United States, Dept. of Health and Human Services
1). In fighting this epidemic, the primary challenge is not the
need to find a cure; the challenge is to prevent chronic diseases
from striking in the first place.
Legislation, however, is not a popular solution when it
comes to most Americans and the food they eat. According to
a nationwide poll, 75% of Americans are opposed to laws that
restrict or put limitations on access to unhealthy foods (Neergaard
and Agiesta). When New York mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed
a regulation in 2012 banning the sale of soft drinks in servings
How Do Typical American Diets Compare to Recommended Intake Levels or Limits?
Source: USDA & HHS: Dietary Guidelines for Americans. 2010 * Solid Fats and Added Sugars
Fig. 1. This graph shows that Americans consume about three
times more fats and sugars and twice as many refined grains as
is recommended but only half of the recommended foods (United
States, Dept. of Agriculture and Dept. of Health and Human
Services, fig. 5-1).
Harba treats both sides fairly.
Harba sets forth the urgency of her argument.
Harba uses a graph to illustrate Americans’ poor nutritional choices.
The visual includes a figure number, descriptive caption, and source information.
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Harba 4
greater than twelve ounces in restaurants and movie theaters,
he was ridiculed as “Nanny Bloomberg.” In California in 2011,
legislators failed to pass a law that would impose a penny-per-
ounce tax on soda, which would have funded obesity prevention
programs. And in Mississippi, legislators passed “a ban on
bans—a law that forbids . . . local restrictions on food or drink”
(Conly A23).
Why is the public largely resistant to laws that would limit
unhealthy choices or penalize those choices with so-called fat
taxes? Many consumers and civil rights advocates find such laws
to be an unreasonable restriction on individual freedom of choice.
As health policy experts Mello et al. point out, opposition to
food and beverage regulation is similar to the opposition to early
tobacco legislation: the public views the issue as one of personal
responsibility rather than one requiring government intervention
(2602). In other words, if a person eats unhealthy food and
becomes ill as a result, that is his or her choice. But those
who favor legislation claim that freedom of choice is a myth
because of the strong influence of food and beverage industry
marketing on consumers’ dietary habits. According to one
nonprofit health advocacy group, food and beverage companies
spend roughly two billion dollars per year marketing directly to
children. As a result, kids see nearly four thousand ads per year
encouraging them to eat unhealthy food and drinks (“Facts”).
As was the case with antismoking laws passed in recent
decades, taxes and legal restrictions on junk food sales could
help to counter the strong marketing messages that promote
unhealthy products.
Harba anticipates objections to her idea. She counters opposing views and provides support for her argument.
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Harba 5
The United States has a history of state and local public
health laws that have successfully promoted a particular behavior
by punishing an undesirable behavior. The decline in tobacco use
as a result of antismoking taxes and laws is perhaps the most
obvious example. Another example is legislation requiring the use
of seat belts, which have significantly reduced fatalities in car
crashes. One government agency reports that seat belt use saved
an average of more than fourteen thousand lives per year in the
United States between 2000 and 2010 (United States, Dept. of
Transportation, Natl. Highway Traffic Safety Administration 231).
Perhaps seat belt laws have public support because the cost of
wearing a seat belt is small, especially when compared with the
benefit of saving fourteen thousand lives per year.
Laws designed to prevent chronic disease by promoting
healthier food and beverage consumption also have potentially
enormous benefits. To give just one example, Marion Nestle, New
York University professor of nutrition and public health, notes that
“a 1% reduction in intake of saturated fat across the population
would prevent more than 30,000 cases of coronary heart disease
annually and save more than a billion dollars in health care
costs” (7). Few would argue that saving lives and dollars is not an
enormous benefit. But three-quarters of Americans say they would
object to the costs needed to achieve this benefit—the regulations
needed to reduce saturated fat intake.
Why do so many Americans believe there is a degree of
personal choice lost when regulations such as taxes, bans, or
portion limits on unhealthy foods are proposed? Some critics of
anti-junk-food laws believe that even if state and local laws
Harba introduces a direct quotation with a signal phrase and follows with a comment that shows readers why she chose to use the source.
Harba acknowledges critics and counterarguments.
An analogy extends Harba’s argument.
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Harba 6
were successful in curbing chronic diseases, they would still be
unacceptable. Bioethicist David Resnik emphasizes that such
policies, despite their potential to make our society healthier,
“open the door to excessive government control over food, which
could restrict dietary choices, interfere with cultural, ethnic, and
religious traditions, and exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities”
(31). Resnik acknowledges that his argument relies on “slippery
slope” thinking, but he insists that “social and political pressures”
regarding food regulation make his concerns valid (31). Yet the
social and political pressures that Resnik cites are really just the
desire to improve public health, and limiting access to unhealthy,
artificial ingredients seems a small price to pay. As legal scholars
L. O. Gostin and K. G. Gostin explain, “[I]nterventions that do not
pose a truly significant burden on individual liberty” are justified
if they “go a long way towards safeguarding the health and well-
being of the populace” (214).
To improve public health, advocates such as Bowdoin
College philosophy professor Sarah Conly contend that it is
the government’s duty to prevent people from making harmful
choices whenever feasible and whenever public benefits outweigh
the costs. In response to critics who claim that laws aimed at
stopping us from eating whatever we want are an assault on our
freedom of choice, Conly offers a persuasive counterargument:
[L]aws aren’t designed for each one of us individually.
Some of us can drive safely at 90 miles per hour, but
we’re bound by the same laws as the people who can’t,
because individual speeding laws aren’t practical. Giving
up a little liberty is something we agree to when we
Long quotation is introduced with a signal phrase naming the author.
Long quotation is set off from the text. Quotation marks are omitted.
Including the source’s credentials makes Harba more credible.
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Harba 7
agree to live in a democratic society that is governed by
laws. (A23)
As Conly suggests, we need to change our either/or thinking
(either we have complete freedom of choice or we have government
regulations and lose our freedom) and instead need to see health
as a matter of public good, not individual liberty. Proposals such
as Mayor Bloomberg’s that seek to limit portions of unhealthy
beverages aren’t about giving up liberty; they are about asking
individuals to choose substantial public health benefits at a very
small cost.
Despite arguments in favor of regulating unhealthy food as
a means to improve public health, public opposition has stood in
the way of legislation. Americans freely eat as much unhealthy
food as they want, and manufacturers and sellers of these foods
have nearly unlimited freedom to promote such products and
drive increased consumption, without any requirements to warn
the public of potential hazards. Yet mounting scientific evidence
points to unhealthy food as a significant contributing factor
to chronic disease, which we know is straining our health care
system, decreasing Americans’ quality of life, and leading to
unnecessary premature deaths. Americans must consider whether
to allow the costly trend of rising chronic disease to continue in
the name of personal choice or whether to support the regulatory
changes and public health policies that will reverse that trend.
Long quotation is followed with comments that connect the source to Harba’s argument.
Conclusion sums up Harba‘s argument and provides closure.
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Harba 8
Works Cited
Conly, Sarah. “Three Cheers for the Nanny State.” The New York
Times, 25 Mar. 2013, p. A23.
“The Facts on Junk Food Marketing and Kids.” Prevention Institute,
www.preventioninstitute.org/focus-areas/supporting
-healthy-food-a-activity/supportinghealthy-food-and
-activity-environments-advocacy/get-involved-were-not
-buying-it/735-were-not-buying-it-the-facts-on-junk-food
-marketing-and-kids.html. Accessed 21 Apr. 2013.
Goodwin, Lorine Swainston. The Pure Food, Drink, and Drug
Crusaders, 1879-1914. McFarland, 2006.
Gostin, L. O., and K. G. Gostin. “A Broader Liberty: J. S. Mill,
Paternalism, and the Public’s Health.” Public Health, vol. 123,
no. 3, 2009, pp. 214-21, doi:10.1016/j.puhe.2008.12.024.
Mello, Michelle M., et al. “Obesity—the New Frontier of Public
Health Law.” New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 354,
no. 24, 2006, pp. 2601-10, www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/
NEJMhpr060227.
Neergaard, Lauran, and Jennifer Agiesta. “Obesity’s a Crisis but
We Want Our Junk Food, Poll Shows.” Huffington Post,
4 Jan. 2013, www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/04/
obesity-junk-food-government-intervention-poll_n
_2410376.html.
Nestle, Marion. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences
Nutrition and Health. U of California P, 2013.
Pollan, Michael. “The Food Movement, Rising.” The New York
Review of Books, 10 June 2010, www.nybooks.com/articles/
2010/06/10/food-movement-rising/.
Heading is centered.
Access date used for an online source that has no update date.
List is alphabetized by authors’ last names (or by title when a work has no author).
First line of each entry is at the left margin; extra lines are indented ½″.
Double-spacing is used throughout.
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Harba 9
Resnik, David. “Trans Fat Bans and Human Freedom.” American Journal
of Bioethics, vol. 10, no. 3, Mar. 2010, pp. 27-32.
United States, Department of Agriculture and Department
of Health and Human Services. Dietary Guidelines for
Americans, 2010, health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2010/
dietaryguidelines2010.pdf.
United States, Department of Health and Human Services, Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention. The Power of Prevention,
National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health
Promotion, 2009, www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/pdf/2009
-Power-of-Prevention.pdf.
United States, Department of Transportation, National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration. Traffic Safety Facts 2010: A
Compilation of Motor Vehicle Crash Data from the Fatality
Analysis Reporting System and the General Estimates System.
2010, www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811659.pdf.
The government agency is used as the author of a government document.
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