Essay #1 Topics

ENG101-2610: Ethics of Food
Prof. Alexander

Essay #1 Topics

Due: Thursday, 4/22

Please write an 3-4 page persuasive essay (typed, double-spaced) on one of the following topics. The essay should take a position on your topic in a thesis statement, develop that thesis through detailed explanations of several major claims, and provide support for each major claim. You are encouraged to use personal experience to support your argument, but you must use textual support from the course pack and at least two pieces of independent research gathered through the library’s subscription databases or book research. You must provide MLA in-text citations and a “Works Cited” entry for all references.

1. In “Your Trusted Friends,” Eric Schlosser discusses “the explosion in children’s advertising” that has taken place in the past three decades (42), noting that alongside conventional advertising fast food restaurants use a number of specialized tools and “marketing alliances” to entice children and to gather information about them and their food preferences (48). More recently, according to Schlosser, this advertising has been extended to the hallways and even the classrooms of public schools. Should fast food advertising be allowed in schools?

2. In “Behind the Counter,” Eric Schlosser describes efforts to unionize McDonald’s restaurants over the past 50 years and the company’s organized resistance to such efforts, both passively through the use of Fordist systems of production and the franchise structure of the corporation and actively in the form of “flying squads” and restaurant closures (76). Should fast food restaurant employees be allowed to unionize?

3. A persuasive topic of your choice, based on your reading of Schlosser’s “Behind the Counter” and “Your Trusted Friends.” If you choose this option, you must present your topic to me in a brief paragraph by Tuesday, 4/13.