Please grade my essay too!
Sajjad1994Prompt: The following appeared in a magazine article on trends and lifestyles.
"In general, people are not as concerned as they were a decade ago about regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses. Walk into the Heart's Delight, a store that started selling organic fruits and vegetables and whole-grain flours in the 1960's, and you will also find a wide selection of cheeses made with high butterfat content. Next door, the owners of the Good Earth Café, an old vegetarian restaurant, are still making a modest living, but the owners of the new House of Beef across the street are millionaires."
Discuss how well-reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
Essay for grading:
The argument put forth in the magazine article claims that people are not as concerned as they were a decade ago about regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheese. It provides the examples of availability of cheese in an organic departmental store and of a restaurant selling beef outperforming one that serves vegetarian cuisine as evidence for this conclusion. Stated in this way, the argument manipulates facts and presents selective evidence to draw a conclusion. Furthermore, the argument also showcases examples of a leap of faith and poor reasoning. Therefore the argument is weak and has several flaws.
Firstly, the argument provides an example of a grocery store selling a wide selection of cheese with high butterfat content to try and prove that people do not watch their intake of fatty cheese. The argument wrongly attributes the availability of cheese in a department store to a lack of health consciousness among customers. The validity of product does not mean that a majority of consumers purchase it. Furthermore, the availability of product does not mean that the customers who purchase it are not health conscious. The author fails to clarify how validity of cheese is correlated with lack of regulation in consumption.
Secondly, the argument tries to draw a comparison between the perceived earnings of two restaurants, one selling vegetarian food called Good Earth cafe and the other selling beef dishes called House of Beef and concludes that since the owners of house of beef are millionaires and those of good earth cafe earn a modest living, people in general are not as concerned about their intake of read meat. However, the author fails to elaborate and explain how this concussion was made. Firstly, there is not evidence provided to prove that the owners of the beef house are millionaires because of the restaurent. They may have other means of income along with the restaurant business. Secondly, the author uses the owner’s economic status to draw conclusions about the restaurant’s popularity. However, it may be true that the good earth cafe is just as popular however, the menu is economically priced and hence the owners may make a modest living. It may also be the case that the good earth cafe is unpopular due to reasons other than food preferences as alleged by the argument. These factors may include bad hygiene in the restaurant, lack of seating space, lack of good service among others.
Lastly, the argument draws a general conclusion based on anecdotal evidence. It seems like a very small sample of presumed evidence was used to reach the conclusion. Moreover, there is no evidence of the use of a robust methodology, data collection or rigorous evaluation of evidence.
In summary, the argument is flawed and therefore unconvincing. It could be considerably strengthened if the author clearly mentioned mentions the relevant methodology for evaluating evidence used to draw the conclusion. In order to assess the merits of a certain change, it is essential to have full knowledge of all contributing factors. Additionally the author must engage in more rigorous fact finding exercise routine eliminate flaws and substantiate the arguement.