Logos Outweighs All Others

Shelby Louviere
9/22/2010

Logos Outweighs all Others
The topic of obesity is an issue that doctors and scientists have studied and researched for many years. Obesity can begin as early as childhood and it creates serious health problems. I chose two articles about obesity, both written by experts on the topic, to rhetorically analyze. The first source, “Obesity Among Children” by Alvin Poussaint M.D., explains how the media and lack of physical activity could cause children to become obese. It also provides tips to parents on how to resolve their children’s lack of physical activity. The second source, “Relation between Consumption of Sugar-Sweetened Drinks and Childhood Obesity” by Dr. David Ludwig, Karen Petersen, and Steven Gortmaker, focuses more on the intake of sugary beverages and the effects they have on children’s bodies. Source 1 uses a mixture of pathos, mythos, and logos to attract the audience, while source 2 was specifically written for logos appeal, as seen through various samples within the articles.
In “Obesity Among Children” the use of pathos and mythos is noticeable throughout the text, but logos has the main appeal. Right off the top we have an example of all three appeals; the author claims, “It’s not “cool” to be fat…” (Poussaint). This can evoke emotions, such as empathy, for those who are overweight. It also employs the use of logos by stating a fact that really, people don’t aim to be fat. A reference to mythos would be that our culture and society have made being ‘fat’ a grotesque concept.
Following this first example, a logical appeal is made using facts. The author states a statistic about the growing percentage rate of obesity in children. It is said that the statistic has jumped from a 5 percent growth rate in 1964 to a 13 percent growth rate in 1994, and in the present it is a whopping 20 percent and still rising. The author again applies logic by making a claim that children spend up to six hours of their time sitting in...