Please rate my essay - Artificial Sweeteners
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26 Jun 2014, 08:17
The following appeared in the health section of a magazine on trends and lifestyles.
People who use the artificial sweetener aspartame are better off consuming sugar, since aspartame can actually contribute to weight gain rather than weight loss. For example, high levels of aspartame have been shown to trigger a craving for food by depleting the brain of a chemical that registers satiety or the since of being full. Furthermore, studies suggest that sugars, if consumed after at least 45 minutes of continuous exercise, actually enhance the body's ability to burn fat. Consequently, those who drink aspartame-sweetened juices after exercise will also lose this caloric-burning benefit. Thus it appears that people consuming aspartame rather than sugar are unlikely to achieve their dietary goals.
In this passage, the argument states that people who consume aspartame, an artificial sweetener, rather than sugar are unlikely to achieve their dietary goals because aspartame can actually contribute to weight gain rather than weight loss. Stated in this way, the argument distorts the view of the situation by introducing examples of leap of faith, poor reasoning and ill-defined terminology. More importantly, the conclusion of the argument relies on assumptions for which there is weak evidence. Hence, the argument is left unconvincing and must be further examined before the author could establish an outright claim that aspartame contributes to weight gain.
First, the argument states that “high levels of aspartame” have shown to trigger a craving for food. This statement is a stretch because the author readily assumes that people who consume sweeteners do so at “high levels” of intake. Moreover, the evidence doesn’t necessarily suggests that the sensation of “craving for food” leads to weight gain. In other words, the author doesn’t show a connection between the sensation of craving for food and the subsequent consumption of food. Therefore, the argument could have been much more convincing if it addressed the issues mentioned above.
Second, the argument suggests that sugar enhances the body’s ability to burn fat. Again, this is a weak and unsupported claim because the author inappropriately establishes a correlation between sugar consumption and weight loss. First, “burning fat”, though often used in the same context with weight loss, doesn’t necessarily lead to weight loss. More importantly, the author provides a restriction in his argument by mentioning that a person must undertake “at least 45 minutes of continuous exercise” before consuming sugars could actually enhance the body’s ability to burn fat. In other words, it is inappropriate to suggest that consuming sugars, instead of artificial sweeteners, could help people achieve their dietary goals. Therefore, to make the argument more persuasive, the author must reexamine his evidence and provide a clear explanation of his assumptions that leads to establishing his conclusion.
Finally, the argument claims that people who drink aspartame-sweetened juices after exercise “lose this calorie burning-benefit”, which is mentioned in the author’s previous sentence in the passage. Again, the author makes another leap of faith by citing a piece of faulty evidence. First, the author fails to mention other factors within “aspartame-sweetened juices”. In other words, are there other ingredients in these juices that might lead to the loss of the calorie-burning benefit mentioned above? Second, the author avoids to mention that people who consume aspartame regularly instead of sugars might overall consume less calories than people who are on a regular sugar diet. Without clearing the questions mentioned above, the author leaves his audience with an impression of wishful thinking, clearly something the conclusion cannot rely on.
In conclusion, the author tries to persuade his readers to believe that artificial sweeteners lead to weight gain rather than weight loss. Instead of approaching this subject with strict scientific evidence, the author mentions faulty evidence in the realms of physical exercise that ultimately leads his argument astray. Without providing further evidence or at least establishing a strong correlation between consumption of sweeteners and weight gain, the conclusion is left open to debate.