Eating Green

Margaret Lundberg author of “Eating Green” is a vegetarian herself. As a child her mother would always feed her children healthy meals. For Lundberg it was easy to transition her diet into a vegetarian diet because she had grown up accustomed to that type of lifestyle. As a grandmother she began to realize that not only does she worry about her family members but that the benefits that contribute to being a vegan can certainly be a huge help on saving the planet we live on. There are many consequences that America may face if they continue to eat the way they eat, is what Lundberg is trying to argue. The purpose of her argument is to get others to consider a vegetarian diet in their life to potentially eliminate problems that arise from their meat intake. Her argument was weak due to not having a strong support to her evidence, losing that confidence by asking rhetorical questions, and not taking advantage of her resources.

A reason why her argument was not that effective was because instead of making her argument strong she weakened it by asking rhetorical questions. Those questions in which she did not have the answers to it. Or let alone her answers to it weren’t well supported. Once the rhetorical question have been asked the reader should not have to stop and try to think of the right answer to her question. They can also skip the question and not think much about it, that’s when her argument became weak because some parts were missing which could have helped her. There are sometimes when the author can get away with this, but the way Lundberg structured her essay it was a down side to it. Her confidence was lowered due to the fact that the full answer to her questions were not present. It is hard for the reader to be influenced by this because if her argument lacks confidence, the reader will get an understanding that this issue may not be serious as she wants it to seem.

In her essay she stereotypes America by the foods a great majority eat which are burgers and she has a point, America’s culture contains these type of foods. The burgers contain meat, and meat is produced by cows which bring problems to this planet. If people keep abusing the recommended intake of meat Lundberg claims that there are many problems which can be avoided if people go vegan. As the population continues to grow the demand for food increases and if people would be more aware of this issue there wouldn’t be any more drastic changes. Aside from that she mentions on paragraph 3 about an experience she had in her life.

She had gone to Israel with a group of people and on their way back home they were all craving a hamburger even after they had eaten a good vegan dinner. This made her argument have a weak point too it because she’s trying to influence readers to go vegetarian to save the planet but here she goes talking about wanting a meat based food. On her side she might have done this because she believed that people will get cravings of wanting meat but have to sacrifice to save the planet. Although this should have been left out because it may cause confusion to the reader.

In her argument she had evidence such as statistics and scholarly people to support the points she was making. She mentioned Randall Huffman and used him as a resource to give information to the other side of her argument. Huffman stated that meat is an essential part of our diet, unlike Lundberg who is trying to argue that people need to go vegetarian because it also serves a benefit for our health. In a strong argument the reader is well aware of both sides of the subject and it’s noticeable that she did not get in much detail about this. She stated a few things and then right away was done with talking about the other side of her argument. It’s a good thing she wants to try and get her message across but this argument was one sided and the reader should have the understanding of the other side, to be able to make better judgment.

Overall, Lundberg could have supported her argument more rather than just letting the reader have the small option to consider making a change. The rhetorical questions lead her to lack confidence in her argument. She did not take the time to inform the reader about the other side to her argument and made a poor decision on including an experience she had about a craving she had for meat. As a reader this did not influence me in any way to change my diet to a vegetarian one. Yes, I am aware there can potentially be an issue but this argument did not convince me it was time to change, she made it seem like either way if we change or not there are always resources America has to increase the demand for food.

Work Citied
Lundberg, Margaret. “Eating Green.” The Bedford Reader.12th ed. Boston: X.J. Kennedy, 2014. 570-74. Print.