Chris Porter
ENG 105-14
January 29, 2012
Rhetorical Analysis

Spandex is No Good!

In the essay, “What You Eat is Your Business”, Radley Balko writes to tell his audience about how the government is trying to control people’s health and eating habits by restricting food, taxing high calorie food, and considering menu labeling. Balko includes in his essay that government restricting diets and having socialist insurance is not helping the obesity problem, but it is only making it worse because it not allowing people to take their health in to their own hands so they have no drive to lose weight or eat healthy. In his essay, Balko is targeting society, including those who may be obese, he is trying to show them that the laws our …show more content…

An example of how he used the ethical appeal is, “More and more, states are preventing private health insurers from changing overweight and obese clients higher premiums, which effectively removes any financial incentive for maintaining a healthy lifestyle.”(158). Using these insurance laws show the audience that Balko is an credible author and is not just writing about his opinion but actually has information to back him up. He is explaining how increasing these obese people’s insurance is going to make them have to go on to assistance causing our taxes to pay for their health care, taking responsibility for their own health out of their hands, if your health care is paid for by the state or government then you are less likely to care about your own health. Balko uses emotional, ethical, and logical appeal to express to his audience his feelings about our government’s food control and ‘public health’ insurance. He uses emotional appeal to draw in society in how our taxes pay for others health care. He uses the ethical appeal to make his writing sound believable and credible so that his audience will take his views into consideration. He uses the logical appeal to use his audience’s logical way of thinking so they don’t see emotions but blatant facts. Balko is telling his audience that our government and health insurance companies are not helping