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The Cooking Animal Final Draft

The document is a summary of Michael Pollan's essay "The Cooking Animal". It summarizes the key points of Pollan's essay in three paragraphs. Pollan argues that cooking is what distinguishes humans from animals. He discusses the benefits of cooking and cites a study showing that increased time spent cooking correlates with lower obesity rates. Pollan's thesis is that Americans should spend more time cooking to support healthier diets. The summary analyzes Pollan's effective writing style and well-organized structure, concluding that the essay makes its point about the importance of cooking clearly and engagingly.

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Stephenie Fortunata
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163 views4 pages

The Cooking Animal Final Draft

The document is a summary of Michael Pollan's essay "The Cooking Animal". It summarizes the key points of Pollan's essay in three paragraphs. Pollan argues that cooking is what distinguishes humans from animals. He discusses the benefits of cooking and cites a study showing that increased time spent cooking correlates with lower obesity rates. Pollan's thesis is that Americans should spend more time cooking to support healthier diets. The summary analyzes Pollan's effective writing style and well-organized structure, concluding that the essay makes its point about the importance of cooking clearly and engagingly.

Uploaded by

Stephenie Fortunata
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Stephenie Fortunata

Professor Evan Peterson

English 100

Jun 14th 2013

The Cooking Animal

“The Cooking Animal” by Michael Pollan talks about the importance of cooking and

how it has changed humans’ lives time after time. Among all the reading assignments, I love this

essay the most. I think the essay is effective to read because it has a well-organized structure and

provides a lot of accurate information that is supported with study research. The topic itself is

interesting and a must read for those who want to have a healthy diet life.

Pollan starts his writing with three quotes from a Scottish writer, James Boswell, a

French gastronome, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, and an anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss.

All three of these men state that cooking culture is what sets humans apart from animals; from

the first paragraph, I can tell that Pollan has a strong, opinioned start. In the next two paragraphs,

he talks about the benefits of cooking from science and anthropology (culture) perspectives. He

mentions that cooking creates an occasion where people sit down, share, and enjoy their meals

together. Beside the benefits of cooking, Pollan also brings up a short history about outdoor

grilling and how people fit cooking into their weekend recreation activities. Shortly after that,

Pollan starts to introduce his opinion about cooking by mentioning a research study done by a

group of Harvard economists led by David Cutler showing relation between cooking preparation

at home and the increasing number of obese Americans. The study shows that the more time
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spent on the food preparation, the lower the obesity rates. Pollan’s thesis statement is in the

beginning of the tenth paragraph, and it is supported with, in my opinion, with strong evidence

(various sources and a research study) in paragraph 7 - 9. After that, he provides the reader with

questions and his hopes on turning America’s eating habits around. Pollan ends his essay with a

solution to have a healthy diet based on Harry Balzer’s opinion, which is if you want to eat less,

cook your own meals.

From the little picture of the essay’s content, I can say that it’s one of a few good essays

with a well-organized structure. Pollan mentions some evidence before carefully stating his

opinion (thesis statement); then he introduces the problem and provides with a solution.

The cooking animal essay is enjoyable to read. It has a catchy hook that successfully

engages the audience with the topic and makes them want to know more about it. It makes me

feel related to the topic because I’m one of the people who are lazy to cook and consume too

much instant foods. And thank you to the writer’s clarity and use of simple vocabulary, so I can

easily read and understand his points in the essay.

Another thing that I recognize from this essay is the writer’s direct style of writing and

relaxed tone. From the beginning of the essay, he points out his main idea, focusing every

argument and every piece of evidence to directly address the main idea. Pollan doesn’t waste his

time on other things except trying to make people realize how important cooking is. However,

even though he’s being straight forward, he delivers his opinion in a relaxed tone. This is what I

like about him. He doesn’t make the atmosphere too serious and boring; in fact, he puts in some

funny sentences to lighten up the mood. For example, in the paragraph 13, he tells us that if we

had a dream to reform the American way of eating, then maybe it’s not a good idea to call Harry
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Balzer, who has a negative point of view about changing Americans’ eating behaviors, right

away to discuss it. He also says that Harry Balzer is crusty as a fresh baguette in paragraph 16. I

believe with his friendly humorous tone, the reader will be delighted to keep reading and

guessing what comes next.

Pollan’s target audience in his essay is American citizens. He states overall Americans’

eating habit, which means he doesn’t specify a specific group of people. The research study’s

samples he mentions are also Americans in general. Therefore, the target audience is everyone,

including himself. What’s more, Pollan’s essay effectively makes its point to the audience,

because of his well-organized structure. He also uses ‘we’ instead of ‘people’ or ‘they’ so that

the readers feel related to the topic.

From his well-written essay, I can take away two important points: (1) How Pollan makes

sense and strengthens his idea with evidence. The fact that Americans today consume a lot of

instant food because they’re too lazy to cook doesn’t surprise me because I go through this kind

of situation too, especially since no one cooks for me; also almost every day I eat instant food or

just grab a “to go” meal at supermarket. However, what I didn’t realize until I read the essay is

the more people don’t cook, the more they are likely to eat. At first, I didn’t really see the

connection between less cooking activities with frequency of eating, but then Pollan did a good

job on explaining the connection (described in paragraph 10). Now I understand why people who

spend less time in cooking eat more food. It is simply because instant foods (made by industries)

are cheap and easy to eat; therefore, people are likely to eat them every day. I love how he

supports his opinion by citing from various sources (such as Jean-Antgelme Brillat-Savarin,

Claude Levi-Strauss, and Harry Balzer) which can make the reader strongly agree with his point

of view. (2) Pollan’s writing style does affect readers. The way he delivering his intention makes
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the reader concerned about the issues (eating habit, increasing rates of obesity). But he doesn’t

leave the readers hanging in curiosity, because then he provides a solution which is to follow a

healthy diet. He doesn’t force or say that the readers have to do exactly what he wants. He offers

solution to make things better.

I think the cooking animal essay has a good choice of topic because eating is one of our

daily needs, and things we eat do matter. Foods that are easy and quick to make are never good.

They contain massive amounts of sugar, fat, and salt! Therefore, spend some time to cook;

homemade foods are often more fit to our taste and made full of love.

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