My favorite class reading of the year was “Consider the Lobster” by David Foster Wallace. In my head going in to it, I wasn’t sure how an 11 page exposé about a lobster festival would hold my attention. This sensation quickly faded, though, as I was soon intrigued by the way Wallce began to reveal some of the potential cruelties of eating lobster. It became apparent that the piece wasn’t intent to focus on the festival but rather the inhumanities of it. I was moved by this kind of portrayal.

The best thing I read for this class that I chose on my own was Scientific American article called “The Culture of Coffee Drinkers.” I was captivated by this piece because it explained coffee’s cultural significance in way I had never thought about. Coffee’s correspondence with the work place became a phenomenon only recently after Coffee was re-branded in 1970s as a speciality drink, viral to preforming the day’s task. This has turned Coffee into our ultimate stimulant and a drink we treasure on a daily basis.

The meaning of the rhetoric of food begins with the speaking and writing associated with food but it extends much beyond that. Analyzing the rhetoric of food allows one to understand the nuances that lie behind food texts. Details such as the author’s ideology, their purpose, and the cultural significance of what their depicting make up by rhetoric of his or her food text. This rhetoric expresses the author’s ideas about food, but often times it does more. It can reflect bigger ideas about the world such as power dynamics and the ethics of our cultural dominance over animals. Thus, in short, the rhetoric of food explains the significance of the the speaking and writing associated with food texts.