Blog Post #4: A Defining Moment

A writer’s goal, his “whole purpose,” is unique in many ways from any other writer, but the end result of his writing a work of nonfiction is, inevitably, the same: he makes and supports an argument. Some writers are woefully inept at the execution of such a simple task as making and supporting an argument. Michael Pollan, however, is not. In In Defense of Food, Pollan argues that the Western concern for health coupled with the sidelining of what he deems to be food has resulted in the “American Paradox:” increasing worry about nutrition leads to increasing deterioration of health. Pollan’s argument for the American Paradox is not only clearly stated and restated frequently within the book itself, but also well supported by eloquent prose calling on evidence ranging from the scientific to the anecdotal and everything in between, persuading via adroit manipulation of ethos, pathos, and logos to further his argument.

Pollan initially addresses the American Paradox by discussing the attitude of Americans with respect to food and eating. His argument appeals to logos in many aspects, often citing specific examples and extrapolating from them to draw his own conclusions. He then supports these conclusions with sufficient evidence to make them feasible in the eyes of the reader. For example, Pollan claims that the Puritan origins of the United States are partially responsible for the widespread American disdain for culinary hedonism. He then assesses the attitude of the Puritans at the time and why they might upturn their noses at excessive enjoyment of sustenance: Puritans of the past believed, as do many Americans of today, that food is merely a source of nourishment, not an item to be treasured and revered. What he does here is establish a strong argument that uses logic to analyze a historical fact—he uses both logos and ethos here to establish a strong base from which to make the finer points of his argument.

Pollan continues to develop his argument for the existence of the American Paradox by defining exactly what it is—in his own words. Defining the concept that he will try to prove is a brilliant, well-known, oft-used strategy of writers of persuasive prose. Defining exactly what he thinks the phrase means allows him to fit the definition to the evidence that he will provide later on in the book, which makes the evidence appear to perfectly fit the definition, giving the illusion—whether true or not—of very strong evidence for the argument that he is making. In the case of the argument for the existence of the American Paradox, Pollan defines it to be thus: the more we worry about what we should eat, the less healthy we seem to become. A great aspect of this definition, from the point of view of an author, is the extreme vagueness of his argument. He can, and does, transform the word into all of its many synonyms in establishing his main points. He appeals in every instance of worry to different modes of persuasion: sometimes to pathos in describing a person trying to be healthy, but failing; sometimes to ethos, describing with statistical data the effects of choosing poorly; sometimes to logos, with verbiage addressing the simple logic of his way of doing things.

Pollan effectively uses his prolific writing skills to establish an argument that is nearly flawless by developing a phrase that he purposefully defined to best support the data that he used to support his position. This strategy is very effective in persuading the reader into the way of thinking of the writer because it combines all three modes of persuasion cleverly and with great uniformity. The repetition with which Pollan bombards the reader really drives his points home, and the fact that Pollan is able to make each new persuasive point sufficiently different from the others that he is able to maintain a level of interest without compromising thoroughness. Pollan argues artfully and cunningly to make his argument greater than any counterargument.