Ella Perrin

Assignment: Rhetorical Analysis

RC 2001 Fall 2015
9/16/15
Rhetorical Analysis
Childhood obesity is an issue that is currently very important to a lot of
Americans and is getting a lot of attention in many media outlets, whether through the
many facets of Michelle Obamas Lets Move! campaign, or the plethora of
documentaries on Netflix on the topic. Therefore, articles about possible solutions to
childhood obesity are in the midst of a kairotic moment right now. GOOD Magazine
published a professional article entitled New Study Suggests Emoticons Could be the
Key to Fighting Childhood Obesity, about a study by Dr. Robert Siegel, professor at the
University of Cincinnati and medical director of the Center for Better Health and
Nutrition at the Cincinnati Childrens Hospital. This experiment attempted to get kids to
choose the healthy option in cafeteria lunches by putting green cutout smiley-faces by the
healthy foods, and rewarding kids who picked all the healthiest options with small prizes
such as stickers. The result of the study was that sales of healthy foods increased
dramatically.
The Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics published an
academic article along similar lines in 2013, entitled Systematic Review of CommunityBased Childhood Obesity Prevention Studies. It discusses a study by Dr. Sara Bleich of
Johns-Hopkins University, which analyzed different community-based childhood obesity
prevention programs in the United States and high-income countries with the goal of
determining the effectiveness of different obesity-combatting strategies (Bleich, 2013).
While these two articles discussed very similar topics, they do so in very different ways. I

will be looking at how the different rhetorical choices of the authors are effected by their
different goals.
The authors of the academic article explicitly state that the target audience of their
article is researchers, clinicians, public health practitioners, and policy makers, and the
article was written with the goal of helping guide future research strategies as well as
decision-making about the most appropriate setting and types of interventions to focus
on to maximize efforts to prevent childhood obesity in developed countries, (Bleich,
2013). Another goal of the article is for more research to be done on the topic of
community-based programs for combatting obesity, because there are currently not
enough studies with consistent methods and outcomes to determine the impact of
community-based childhood obesity prevention programs onweight outcomes,
(Bleich, 2013). This article is an academic research paper, and therefore it follows the
guidelines of its genre, and is arranged into very clear sections discussing the different
aspects of the study. It begins with an abstract, which states the objective, methods,
results, and conclusions. Then there is an introduction, describing the exigence behind the
article, that childhood obesity represents one of the most important and challenging
public health problems in developed countries, and that this study contributes to the
literature [on childhood obesity] by focusing specifically on community-based childhood
obesity prevention programs in high-income countries. To [the researchers] knowledge,
no study has systematically reviewed this evidence-base, (Bleich, 2013). The purpose of
this information is to convince readers that this study is important because it is something
that has never been done before, which is an appeal to logos because of its use of
reasoning to convince the reader of this point. The introduction also states that this study
is part of a larger, 2-year project of a systematic review funded by the Agency for

Healthcare Research and Quality, which helps establish its credibility, because it is
funded by a credible agency (Bleich, 2013).
The next section of the article is entitled Methods, and is divided into many
sections discussing the authors methods of research and defining the terms of the study.
The section begins with Bleich stating that she and her associates used the methods
recommended by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Methods Guide for
Effectiveness and Comparative Effectiveness Reviews to compare the different studies
examined. This makes the article seem more credible because it is following a credible
guideline. This section also discusses how it rated the amount of bias in each article,
which makes the study appear more trustworthy since it attempted to find a lack of bias in
the studies it examined. It discusses how the researchers graded the quantity, quality, and
consistency of the best available evidence by adapting an evidence grading scheme
recommended in the Methods Guide for Conducting Comparative Effectiveness
Reviews, which also increases the credibility of the article (Bleich, 2013). The
Methods section also discusses in detail the Search Strategy of how the researchers
found relevant studies, and the selection of studies deemed eligible for inclusion in their
review. The step-by-step discussion of the selection process acts as an appeal to logos by
using facts and reasoning to cause the audience to be more likely to accept the results of
the study as accurate. This section also includes definitions of the outcomes that this
study looked for, which another use of logos.
The next section of this article discussed the results of the study. It discusses in
detail the number of potential articles found (40,356), and the process of elimination that
caused them to end up with nine articles to examine in the end. This use of precise
numbers and detailed description is yet another example of the appeal of logos. There are

also four data tables throughout the article that employ logos. In the Results section,
each of the nine final studies that were chosen to be examined are discussed in detail. The
article gives specifics such as that the study included 1858 children in elementary
school of whom 37% were African-American, 14% were Hispanic, 37% were white,
and 10 were Asian; the follow-up period was 36 months, (Bleich, 2013). This specific
information provided about each study further increased the appeal to logos in this article.
The Discussion section of the academic article examined the strengths and
weaknesses of this study, and came to the conclusion that there are not enough studies
about the specific programs that this study wanted to examine to come to a conclusion
about the effectiveness of community-based childhood obesity programs. Doing a selfexamination of the strengths and weaknesses of their own study helped establish the
ethos of the authors. There is a call-to-action for more research to be done in this area,
because the cumulative impact [of community-based childhood obesity programs]
across the population has the potential to yield significant public health benefits,
(Bleich, 2013). This is an appeal to pathos because it causes the reader to feel a desire to
help improve the overall health of their country. The article ends with a section entitled
Financial Disclosure, which uses one last appeal to ethos by stating that the authors
have indicated that they have no financial relationships relevant to this article to
disclose, (Bleich, 2013).
The academic article also had a few tables throughout it, demonstrating things
such as Primary Weight Outcomes in 9 Studies Testing Community-Based Childhood
Obesity Prevention Interventions, and these tables helped increase the logos of the
article by laying out the facts and statistics clearly (Bleich, 2013). The tables were not
directly in the article, but were connected to it by a link, which made them less

accessible, seem less important, and be something that readers would potential pass right
by without taking the time or effort to view.
Overall, this article can be read and understood by a wide audience, but there are
some terms that only people in the discourse community could understand. The article
discusses how it only examined studies that were Randomized controlled trials (RCTs),
quasi-experimental studies, and natural experiments, and the average person does not
know what these different types of studies are (Bleich, 2013). It refers to BMI z-score, Pvalue, and experiments that had statistically significant versus marginally statistically
significant results. These are all terms that only people in the discourse community will
be able to understand.
The professional article, on the other hand, discussed Seigels study on healthy
lunches in schools in a way that was informative yet easy to understand. It could be read
by any literate adult, and the audience is really anyone who cares about the problem of
obesity, but especially parents who have children that eat cafeteria food and schools that
have cafeterias and could implement systems like this. Groups such as schools, school
boards, teachers, parents, and students make up the discourse community, because this
article is not very hard to understand and any of these people could, if they read it, have a
conversation about it. There is a section at the bottom of the article where you can join
the discussion, and leave comments about it, and there are also links at the top of the
article that allow you to quickly share it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google Plus,
all outlets for discussion.
The professional article was written because childhood obesity is a major problem
in America and unhealthy food in schools is a major factor of it, and the study discussed
in this article offers a possible solution to that problem. It is simply arranged in a
paragraph format with one large quote from the American Academy of Pediatrics. At the

bottom of the article there is a list of hashtags (#health #elementaryschool #child

#obesity #schoollunchmenus (Schwartz, 2015)) that mimics the form of a social media
discussion, which makes it appeal to young adults, and is an attempt to get discussion
going. The hope of the author is for people post these hashtags on social media to get the
topic of health in school lunches trending and get more people talking about their article
and the issue in general. The article is written in a fairly conversational style that makes it
easy to understand, yet it has a professional tone that makes it sound informed. There is
also a happy, colorful picture of a childs lunch where everything is animal-shaped. The
picture helps draw people into the article and portrays the articles idea that food can be
fun.
The GOOD Magazine article appears trustworthy because it cites groups such as
the Pediatric Academic Societies and the American Academy of Pediatrics, as well as Dr.
Robert Siegel, the lead researcher in the study (Schwartz, 2015). It uses logos in its
explanation of the study and the fact that it gives lots of percentages about the specific
ways food sales changed. It also makes the ideas of the study appear very relatable to the
audience by saying things including getting kids to eat their vegetables is like, well,
getting kids to eat their vegetables. At the end of the day, broccoli is always going to taste
like broccoli, and describing the studys use of positive imagery as fairly obvious,
(Schwartz, 2015). This is also an appeal to pathos because parents relate to the struggle of
trying to get their kids to eat their vegetables. It also appeals to pathos in that this issue is
one that affects peoples children, and people really care about their children. Also, it
calls emoticons a weapon in the fight to promote healthy eating, (Schwartz, 2015)
which appeals to readers emotions in that it makes them want to join the fight.

Overall, the GOOD Magazine article was written to be accessible to a wideranging audience. Its discussion of an important scientific study in terms that the average
person can understand gives people outside of the field of science access to this
information about a potential way to combat childhood obesity that would otherwise be
very hard to find. Scientific articles are not always easily accessible to the general
population, and in this case only the abstract of this study was publically released. This
professional article shares this information with the public, especially parents who may
be concerned about their childs nutrition in school, and helps popularize the results of
this scientific experiment.
While the professional article and the academic article I chose both discussed
studies about childhood obesity, they used very different rhetoric to do so. The academic
article was much more factual and dry in that it used terminology and jargon specific to
the field of scientific research, while the professional article took a more conversational
approach. Their choices were due largely to their intended audiences; the academic article
was targeting researchers and people in the field of public health. The professional article,
on the other hand, was published online and really needed to jump out and appeal to the
average internet-surfer in order to even get clicked on, let alone hold the readers
attention. In order to get people to read it, the professional article included an intriguing
title and big, bright picture to make it seem interesting. As a result of this analysis, I came
to the conclusion that the audience and venue that an article is written for, as well as the
intended purpose of the article, largely dictate the choices in rhetoric that the author
makes.

Works Cited
Bleich, S. Segal, J. Wu, Y. Wilson, R. Wang, Y. (2013, June 10). Systematic review of
community-based childhood obesity prevention studies. The Official Journal of
the Academy of Pediatrics (Vol. 132 No. 1).
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/132/1/e201.full?sid=b728b120-be1d416d-9aff-94a91bf01019.
Schwartz, R. (2015, April 27). New study suggests emoticons could be the key to fighting
childhood obesity. GOOD Magazine.
http://magazine.good.is/articles/emoticons-promote-healthy-eating-fightchildhood-obesity