Why eat junk food Judith Wurtman

Each day Americans eat 50 million pounds of sugar. 3 mil-lion gallons of ice cream, and 5,8 million pounds of chocolate candy. Yet junk foods, as they are commonly known, contain few if any of the nutrients needed to maintain good health. Why, than, do people eat so much junk food?

We crunch and chew our way through vast quantities of snacks and confectionaries and relieve our thirst with multicolored, flavored soft drinks, with and without calories, for two basic reasons. The first is simple: the food tastes good, and we en-joy the sensation of eating it. Second, we associate these fo-ods, often without being aware of it, with the highly pleasura-ble experiences depicted in the advertisements used to promote their sale. Current television advertisements demonstrate this point: people turn from grumpiness to euphoria after crunching a corn chip. Others water ski into the sunset with their loved ones while drinking a popular soft drink. People entertain on the patio with friends, cook over campfires without mosquitoes, or go to carnivals with grand-dad munching away at the latest candy or snack food. The people portrayed in these scenarios are all healthy, vigorous, and good looking; one wonders how popular the food they convince us to eat would be if they would crunch or drink away while complaining about low back pain or clogged sinuses.

QURSTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Why do people consume snacks and soft drinks? 2. How do television advertisements portray people eating snack foods?

3. What do you think would happen if television advertisements showed people complaining about poor health while eating snack foods?

WRITING ASSIGNNENTS

1. Write a paragraph or an essay in which you describe the

'long-term ill effects oi' a poor diet — one that includes

too much 3unk food or, in a quite different case, one that

leads to undernourishment owing to hunger.

2. Write a parsgraph in which you identify some of the effects

on your body of some activitiy in which you participate—

for instance, tennis, yoga, or dance.

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1'

THE DEATHpPENALTY IS A STEP RACK Core*ta Scott King

In recent years, an 'increase of violence in America, both individual and political, has prompted a backlash of public opinion on capital 'punishment, But however much we abhor vio- lence, legally sanctioned executions are, in fact, immoral and unconstitutional.

Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Norality is never upheld by legalized murderer,

First, capital punishment makes irrevocable any possible miscax'x'iage of justice. Time' and again we have witnessed the specter of mistakenly convicted people being put to death in the nape of criminal justice. Tn those who say that, after all, this doesn't occur too often, I can only reply that if it hap- pens just once, that is too often. And this has occured many times.

Second, the death penalty reflects an unwarranted assump- tion that the wrongdoer is beyond rehabilitation. Pexhaps some individuals cannot be rehabilita*ed; but who shall make that determination ? Is any amount of academic training sufficient to entitle one person to judge another incapable of rehabillta- tion ?

Third, the death penalty is inequitable.

Proponents of capital punishment often cite a "deterrent effect'" as the main benefi* of the death penalty. Not only is there no hard evidence that murdering murderers will deter other pbtential killers, but even the '"logic" of this argu- ment defies comprehension.

Numerous studies show *hat tl5e majority of homicides com- mited in this country are the acts of the victim"s relatives, . friends and acquaintances in the "heat of passion".

What this stxongly suggests is that rational consideration

of future consequences axe seldom a part of the killer's at-titude at the time he commits a crime.

The only way to break the chain of violent reaction is to

practice non-violence as individuals and collectively through

our laws and institutions.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What does the writer think we should do instead of using the

death penalty ?

2. What is illogical about suggesting a "deterrent effect" ? 3. How do you feel about "mistakenly convicted people being put

to death in the name of American criminal justice" ?

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS

1. Write a persuasive essay for or against the death penalty.

Try to appeal the reader's emotions, but remember that you must still be clear and logical in your reasoning for your persuasion to be effective,

2. Some states have enacted laws that mandate jail sentences

for people who are convicted of drunk driving. Do you ag-ree with such laws '? Write an essay that provides evidence for ynur position.

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TWO VIEWS OF TIME Robert Grudin

Imagine that you spend your whole life at a single house. Each day at the same hour you entered an artificially-lit room, undressed and took up the same position in front of a motion pi-cture camera, It photographed one frame of you per day of your life. On your seventy-second birthday, the reel of film was shown. You saw yourself growing and aging over seventy-two ye-ars in less than half an hour (27.4 minutes at sixteen frames per second. Images of this sort, though terrifying, are help-ful in suggesting unfamiliar but useful perspectives of time. They may, for example, symbolize the telescoped, almost momenta-ry character of the past as seen through the eyes of an anxious or disaffected individual. Or they may suggest the remarkable brevity of our lives in the cosmic scale of time, If the estima-ted age of the cosmos were shortened to seventy-two years, a human life would take about ten seconds.

But look at time the other way. Each day is a minor eternity of over 86,000 seconds. During each second, the number of dis-tinct molecular functions going on within the human body is com-parable to the number of seconds in the estimated age of the co-smos, A few seconds are long enough for a revolutionary idea, a starting communication, a baby's conception, a wounding insult, a sudden death. Depending on how we think of them. our lives can be infinitely long or infinitely short.

QGESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

l. Which view of time do you prefer? Why?

2. What does the writer imply is useful about each view of time? 3. How old is the cosmos?

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS