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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Source: Hacker/Sommers (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016, 2014).

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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Source: Hacker/Sommers (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016, 2014).

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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Source: Hacker/Sommers (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016, 2014).

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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