Healthy or Unhealthy Food on the Example of Resisting the Moralization of Eating by Maxfield - Essay Example

Healthy or Unhealthy Food on the Example of “Resisting the Moralization of Eating” by Maxfield: Was She Right?

Obesity and being overweight has become a continuous issue in modern society. Regardless of what you think about it, your lifestyle, and whether you are eating healthy ae more than important factors for living a happy and healthy life. The catch is there is no single fixed diet that will earn you the bodyweight you desire. Some people will eat cake, ice cream, and other high sugar foods and gain no weight while others have to stick a strict regime. This is because people react differently to different foods, and each has different basal metabolic rates.

These are the very issues addressed in healthy or Unhealthy Food on the Example of “Resisting the Moralization of Eating” by Maxfield. In the piece, Maxfield doesn’t approve of how Michael Pollan addresses the topic in an article titled “Escape from the Western Diet.” Mary Maxfield believes that Americans eat healthy in a different way. Healthy eating in the nation is not about quantity; it is about the quality of the food people consume. In her opinion, this has a bigger impact on Americans' health and is directly linked to whether they will be overweight or not. With this in mind, Maxfield argues that we should all work towards meeting our body nutritional and calorific value expectations rather than subscribing to an established notion of what is healthy or what is not.

People have become so keen on what they or those around them eat to the extent of labeling some food choices moral while frowning upon others. The immoral food happens to be the most delicious, the one that our bodies naturally want to indulge in. Since it is often hard to say “no” to such food, people are more susceptible to being overweight and developing diet-based health problems. Science and researchers like Maxfield also believe that diet, coupled with a sedentary lifestyle with little to no exercise, is also to blame. Maxfield states that many people in America like sugar enhanced fast drinks instead of water to satisfy their sweet tooth. This, coupled with the fast-food trend that even employs food science to come up with delicious foods that are not necessarily fit, is fueling the American obesity problem and even exporting it to the world.

While many individuals and researchers feel that simple regulation can reign the bucking fast food market and bring sanity to the obesity rates, Maxfield brings contradictory arguments. Her points might still be valid, but the only problem is they are not based on a specific study and do not have credible sources backing them up. A good example is how she goes about proving her hypothesis that there is no relationship between diet and our health. She needs a lot of research to send such a point home since science studies came to a different conclusion.

Maxfield combines her opinions, personal belief, and opinion of other scholars to come to this conclusion. While this might take some wind off her sails, her arguments are still valid. Maxfield backs up her approach by arguing that even most scientific studies are still a scientist's opinion about the body backed up by potentially flawed statistics. Either way, her goal is to prove that there is no fit, moral, or right way to eat. Eating is a personal preference. People should be educated about different foods but still be allowed to eat the food they want without being victimized.

In her effort to deconstruct the conception that diet leads to health, Maxfield looks at the existing correlation between different cultures and their view of health based on their beliefs. Different cultures define health differently. While here premises might be true, science has proven that there are specific, measurable points that can be used to determine whether a food diet is good for health. To make matters worse, Maxfield uses unreliable sources to back up her efforts to discredit the standard notion of fit or not full of health. Her entire article is based on these sources. Maxfield even goes as far as quoting a known fat acceptance activist to validate her claim, while such a source has all the motivation to be biased. Maxfield fails in her efforts to convince us since there is no international standard of health, there is no way we can label food unhealthy.

Another idea floated around is that there is a capitalistic motivation behind current views of health. The problem is that this doesn’t rhyme with her prior argument that culture begets health principles. In her article, Maxfield had previously explained how different cultures have a different view of who is fit and who is not. The argument in this line of thought is some diets, and even body types are linked to social status. For instance, rich people might indulge in high fat, high sodium meals, while poor folks have access to basics, so their eating will not feature some of the high-fat meaty foods. This could be a way to measure affluence since rich individuals will be full-bodies while the poor will be thinner. But again, instead of this argument pushing her main agenda, it ends up giving a societal interpretation of body weight without directly linking the understanding to health.

In retrospect, the societal decision of what is fit and what isn’t is opinion-based. For instance, cultures that value thinner frames serve smaller portions of food and will steer clear of anything that will make them gain weight. Cultures that value a fuller-bodied frame naturally have fattier foods and focus on eating bigger portions. They will think of thin persons as emaciated and underfed. Maxfield might have constructed a better argument with her essay only if she had chosen better sources and tailored her paper differently. She should have used dieticians or health experts first to clarify that health and diet are related before moving on to argue that the moralization of eating has nothing to do with whether something is scientifically healthy or not – it is but a means to achieve a look the society believes of as fit for health.

It is also important to note that the fact that her paper quotes a fat acceptance activist downright makes her biased. She also uses an unbiased and unsupported argument that discredits science findings by saying there is a lot of religious influence in science that makes her paperless credible. A solid argument cannot be based on such an accusation without evidence. Maxfield says that religion in science plays a vital role in moralizing foods and the decisions we make when choosing our diet. Maxfield has no credible way to back her claims; hence they, also cannot be taken seriously in the scholarly world.

The basis of her article is our misunderstanding of the relationship between health and food, which is driven by the moralization of some foods. While she does have a valid point that the relationship between weight and diet choice is culture-driven, she doesn’t debunk the empirical data medical teams have concerning body weight and health-conscious living. Her argument that we should trust our bodies and focus on eating whatever foods we desire to live a long and fit life has no backing whatsoever.

While Maxfield tries hard to address an essential topic, it is clear that judgment is clouded. Her decision to contest science and call it an idea we have been taught to believe in is skewed. It is well-known that obesity can lead to diabetes, hypertension, and sometimes heart failure. She doesn’t, in any way, try to give evidence to the contrary that is based on reliable studies. She urges us to discredit this information or, in the very list, make us question it. Her conclusion is that we should not listen to scholars or studies. Instead, we should focus on eating what our body wants to live healthily might have had some weight if only she could have handled the argument section of her essay better than she did. Maxfield leaves us more lost than we were at the start since she introduces a valid argument but fails to back it up or grow it to a sound conclusion.