A One Act Play: Healthy Eating: Is it for Everyone?

Character Guide

Radley Balko: A senior editor for the monthly magazine Reason and a columnist for FoxNews.com.  He focuses on investigative writing on civil liberties and criminal justice issues, and he depicts himself as a “small-l” libertarian in his blog The Agitator. He has also contributed to other publications such as the Washington Post and Playboy.

Mary Maxfield: She graduated from Fontbonne University in December 2010 with a degree in creative social change and minors in sociology, American culture studies, and women’s and gender studies.

Michael Pollan: A professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He wrote six books, including The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006), Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual (2010), and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (2008). He was also named one of Time magazine’s top 100 Most Influential People in 2010.

David Zinczenko: The editor-in-chief of Men’s Health magazine and author of numerous best-selling books, including the Eat This, Not That and The Abs Diet Series.

Radley Balko, David Zinczeno, and Michael Pollan are sitting in a restaurant eating a healthy lunch together. They are waiting for their friend Mary Maxfield to arrive. She then enters the restaurant and joins the group. She sits down at their table with a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts in her hands and offers them to her peers.

Mary Maxfield: Hey guys! Sorry I’m late. I had to go to Krispy Kreme and pick up some doughnuts. Anybody want one?

Michael Pollan: Are you kidding? Why in the world would you bring doughnuts? They’re so unhealthy for you!

David Zinczenko: Yeah, why would you bring those? You know I don’t eat any kind of fast food or processed foods.

MM: Come on guys. They aren’t so bad. We are all adults and “adult human beings are allowed to eat whatever and however much they want” (446). It couldn’t hurt to eat just one doughnut.

MP: Yes but we should only eat what is good for our bodies. “In order to eat well we need to invest more time, effort, and resources in providing for our sustenance, to dust off a word, than most of us do today” (439).

Radley Balko: Michael is right, you know. “We’re becoming less responsible for our own health, and more responsible for everyone else’s. Your heart attack drives up the cost of my premium and office visits. And if the government is paying for my anti-cholesterol medication, what incentive is there for me to put down the [doughnut]” (396-397) if I choose to eat one?

DZ: Yeah, “I learned how to manage my diet” (392) and what I eat all on my own. However, “I tend to sympathize with these partly fast-food patrons, though. Maybe that’s because I used to be one of them” (391). The problem with certain processed foods, like doughnuts, is that “there is no calorie information charts on fast-food packaging, the way there are on grocery items” (392-393). Fast-food companies need to work on informing people on what exactly they are putting into their bodies, maybe even provide healthier food options in their restaurants.

RB: You are quite right David but did you know that “Senator Joe Lieberman and Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, among others, have called for a “fat tax” on high-calorie foods[?] Congress is now considering menu-labeling legislation, which would force restaurants to send every menu item to the laboratory for nutritional testing (396). Instead of manipulating or intervening in the array of food options available to American consumers, our government ought to be working to foster a sense of responsibility in and ownership of our own health and well-being” (396).

MP: That is an interesting way to think about things Radley but you have to realize, these fast-food companies are what the Western diet is composed of. “To escape the Western diet and the ideology of nutritionism, we have only to stop eating and thinking that way (437). In other words instead of worrying about nutrients, we should simply avoid any food that has been processed to such an extent that it is more the product of industry than of nature” (438).

RB: Yeah sure, I guess you’re right. All I’m saying is that “we’ll all make better choices about diet, exercise, and personal health when someone else isn’t paying for the consequences of those choices” (398).

MM: Okay everyone let’s all calm down and end this debate. I do agree that “we are a nation stricken by heart disease, diabetes, and cancer” (444) and “our diet of processed foods makes us sick and fat” (444). But you should “trust yourself, trust your body, meet your needs” (446). Eat what is right for your own body. So let’s all enjoy the rest of our lunch eating what we feel is right for our own selves.

 DZ: Well then you eat what you want and I’ll eat what I want, but I’m definitely not going to touch those doughnuts.

Everyone at the table laughs and continues on eating their lunches together.

Works Cited

Pollan, Micheal. “Escape from the Western Diet.” “They Say/I Say”: The Moves That Matter in     Academic Writing: With Readings. 2^ND ed. Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russell Durst. New York: Norton, 2012. 434-441. Print.

Maxfield, Mary. “Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating.” “They Say/ I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing: With Readings. 2^ND ed. Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russell Durst. New York: Norton, 2012. 444-447. Print.  

Balko, Radley. “What You Eat Is Your Business.” “They Say/ I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing: With Readings. 2^ND ed. Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russell Durst. Ney York: Norton, 2012. 395-399. Print.  

Zinczenko, David. “Don’t Blame the Eater.” “They Say/ I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing: With Readings. 2^ND ed. Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russell Durst. Ney York: Norton, 2012. 391-394. Print.