Who Cares What You Put in Your Mouth?

Scott Canon’s article “Why You Can’t Sit Down to Eat Without Making a Statement” is an interesting argument for the environment to his Seattle audience. His knowledge of Seattle’s environmental culture is amazing based upon his references throughout his entire article. Although his immaculate knowledge of the environmental culture is clouded by his use of overstatements to shock Seattle’s population into more action. He pleads too much to the uninformed person and not enough to the refined population that Seattle is known for.
Canon uses a dramatic overstatement in the first few paragraphs to start off his article. He states, “the country imports 13 percent of its food-56 percent more than two decades ago”. 54 percent of 13 is about six percent; which is not a large jump up to 13 percent considering everything that has happened over the last two decades. The world has revolutionized even more and world trade has grown even more. The fact that our imports did not jump even more is more surprising then how little they jumped. Canon’s use of an overstatement of this to try and shock the readers is off putting because yes, at first glance it may seem like it is a huge jump up in imports, but if you even take a minute to consider what is actually being said, it is not at all shocking.
Even as Canon tries to use witty remarks he falls short of making accurate and fluid points throughout his paper. His attempt at irony through his statement of “even as the market explodes for fresh and organic foods, the amount of processed food consumed by Americans continues to grow-a market eating up $500 billion of the national annual grocery bill”. These two statements have no real connection. Canon knows that large numbers like that are used to shock people and that they will make people reconsider what they are eating, but what people don’t know is that on average each person in the US spends over $5,500 each year. When you multiply that by how many Americans there are, $500 billion is a lot of money, but not that much when you think of what people are eating today.
Canon also decides to play upon the residents of Seattle’s environmental tendencies by bringing in their coffee. Seattle is known for their coffee, there are some blocks in Seattle where there are three Starbucks along with other coffee shops, and they all always have lines. Seattle is huge on their coffee. Their imported coffee goes faster than anything else, especially their Brazilian coffee. How Canon plays upon this is through telling them of Starbucks selling “shade-grown” coffee. It’s more environmentally friendly! Why wouldn’t you buy it? It pulls you into our consumer driven world even more, and makes you think even more about what others think of what you are eating. That is exactly what Canon wants you to do is second guess everything you do by thinking of the implications it will have upon what others think of you.