Evaluation of Dan Crane's Essay: McNasty: The New "healthy' Fast Food Items Taste Bad (and Aren't So Healthy Either)

ENG 101-002

Evaluation of Dan Crane’s Essay: McNasty: The New “Healthy’ Fast Food Items Taste Bad (and Aren’t So Healthy Either)

According to Lester Faigley, author of Writing: A Guide for College and Beyond, there are three basic categories of criteria used for all evaluative arguments. These categories; practicality, aesthetics and ethics are the different types of criteria an author uses to support their claim in an evaluative essay. By structuring their paper to effectively reach readers within these guidelines, an evaluation essay can establish itself as a “good” piece of writing.

In a 2003 review written for the online magazine, Slate, Dan Crane, a writer and musician, evaluated food products at popular fast food restaurants that claim to be both healthy and tasty. The review titled, McNasty: The New “Healthy” Fast Food Items Taste Bad (and Aren’t So Healthy Either), demonstrates effectively the supportive use of aesthetic, practical and ethical criteria to persuade readers toward his opinion. This review is an excellent example of a well supportive, evaluative writing.

Fundamentally, there are six questions that can be asked in determining whether or not writing is “good” or “bad”: Does it have a clearly defined purpose? Does it make clear points? Does it support those points with specific information? Is the information clear, connected and arranged well? Are the words appropriate, and the sentences clear, concise, emphatic, and correct? Within the framework of the evaluative criteria chosen, these foundational elements need to be represented.

Crane’s argues in his article that the fast food’s industry’s new health food items are neither tasty nor healthy. In order to support his claim, he predominately uses aesthetic criteria for evaluation. Although taste is strongly opinionated, Crane uses clear, concise and descriptive sensory examples to demonstrate how unappealing these menu items are. He writes that Burger King’s chicken “…tasted as if it had been broiled and treated with some kind of fabric softener.” In addition, the topping on the chicken sandwich “…was sweet, sticky, and nausea-inducing, and the baguette it was served on was mushy, bland and undercooked.” In another aesthetic example, he writes that Taco Bell’s “Fresco Style” option made a taco “…extraordinarily soggy and tasted a little bland.”

Crane also uses practical criterion in support that the menu items are not healthy by quantitatively listing the actual fat and calorie content of the so-called healthy foods. Burger King’s