Running Head: FAD DIETS

Fad Diets and Health

Rebeca Magallanes
University of Texas at El Paso
Instructor: Fatima S. Masound
RWS 1302: Rhetoric and Writing Studies

FAD DIETS

People from all over the world are always believing on what social media offers or advertise us.
They are always believing on what is more easy to accomplish.
Now days is more easy to believe on certain diets that promises quick weight loss and they seem
to be a healthy type of lifestyle but they are usually unhealthy and unbalanced diets known as
Fad Diets. This ones claim that they make you lose fat, but only help you for a certain amount
of time making your body less healthy than what you were, or is really water weight what you
are loosing. They often cut essential foods that we need on our daily basis causing dehydration,
weakness and fatigue.This issue is being addressed throughout two genres that support this
concerns and offer us what are the real solutions to keep a healthy lifestyle and as a consequence
feel good and prevent diseases. The American Academy of Pediatrics, Nutritional scholar article,
and How to Spot a Fad Diet documentary targets all type of ages persons who may have try
different fad diets. It explains how are fad diets affecting, different types of them with their
advantages and disadvantages. On the other hand it also describes how is social media
influencing people with their future promising results. These genres, and their views regarding to
the main issue will be discussed further throughout the remainder of the analysis.

AUDIENCE AND PURPOSE

The first genre, Nutritional Aspects of Vegetarianism, Health Foods, and Fad Diets, is a scholar
research paper from the American Academy of Pediatrics and Committee of Nutrition in which
the purpose of it was to inform readers about how can different types of Fad Diets like the
Vegetarian Diets, Zen Macrobiotic Diet, Vitamin A, C, D, or E diet and the diets for Athletes can
affect or benefit our lifestyles. The article explains what do the diets consist about and what type
of persons try certain diet and for what purposes. It also explains the benefits of it and the
disadvantages. The second genre, How to spot a Fad Diet is a brief documentary from TEDEd
Lessons Worth Sharing in which the purpose of it is to inform how does conventional wisdom
about diets, like advertisements and recommendations, changes over change over the time.The
question is what and how should we eat, so this genre briefly explains different types of Fad
Diets and how to distinguish what is actually healthy from what advertisements want us to
believe.
The targeted audience from the scholar Research Paper are persons who have a certain disease
that could be the reason for them to start a different kind of diet, it also targets athletes who
ingest lots of protein like meats or other protein sources, in general health is an issue that
concerns everyone, so this article explains the advantages and disadvantages of certain Fad
Diets. They are aware of how can Fad Diets be involved on bad health that can lead us to
diseases, a variety of Fad Diets with its advantages and disadvantages, the consequences of them,
and how can a good diet be improving your health. Audience would like to know what could be
the correct path way to have a healthy lifestyle.

The TEDEd video targets all types of persons who are always believing on what advertisements
or marketing offers. They are aware that advertisements always wants us to believe what is good
for us and marketing takes advantage of the desire to drop weight fast, but diets are to good to be
true, they are aware on how to identify a fat diet and its consequences.
In TEDEd video people want to know what could be the possible effects of this diets if they are
combined with a good workout, could they be better of worse?
Both of the genres differ on the time spent to convey the message covering all of the information,
and the time that the audience will take to process all of the information presented. The first
genre is a written piece, it is easier to process the information and take the time to understand
word by word that is presented, the listeners will take from 20 to 30 minutes reading the article.
The second genre is presented as a video, audience will take 4 minutes and 34 seconds, since the
information is presented as a video and it spends a short amount of time, the message needs to be
presented in a brief and specific form so that listeners can maintain their attention and interest to
the topic from the video.
Each of the two genres purposes is to inform the audience and the second one at the end tries to
pursue in a brief form to do something that everyone considers as the correct solution. Each
genre subject deals with the effects of fad diets and health and how can people be influenced by
marketing. Each of the two genres presented the information in a different way, the first genre
describes a series of diets, it's purposes with their advantages and disadvantages for health. The
second one claims that advertisements always want us to believe what is good for us and
marketing takes advantage of the desire to drop weight fast, but Fad Diets are to good to be true,
it explains how to identify one.

Each genre arranges its vocabulary to communicate the information so the audience as a
consequence could understand why is certain vocabulary used in each of the genres. Since the
article is written form and its purpose is to inform, the language needs to be professional, also
because is a Research Article, words need to be strictly formal. In the video, the language is not
very formal, since its a video tries to explain in an entertaining way to capture audience
attention and it uses not very formal language so everyone can understand simple words. The
vocabulary used in the article and the video is specific because it focus on an certain issue with a
terminology that is related to nutrition and healthy lifestyle, like Dietary patterns which may be
harmful and/or which may fail to provide the promised or anticipated benefits. (Academy do
Pediatrics) which needs special attention from professionals to be able to choose what can be the
correct pathway to choose according to our height and weight.
The vocabulary terminology is associated with nutrition and medicine. Another specialized
vocabulary from the topic are words like vegetarianism, macrobiotics, legumes, vitamins,
anemia, metabolism, organic, among others. The text on the article is descriptive, informative
and very well organized to reach its purpose. The Font is written on one same color, very well
organized and legible, there are no images on the document neither colors. The text is arranged
in paragraphs, it has titles in bold letters.

RHETORICAL ISSUES
Both of the genres have rhetorical appeals that can be described, both of them differ on the way
these are displayed, this is because of the different type of genre.

ETHOS
In the first genre, the author explains a series of diets, it describes what could be the possible
effects of a certain fad diet and what does it consists of and for what is it used for. The article
establishes its credibility by presenting the information by a credible and distinguished source,
which is the University of Texas at El Paso library databases, audience know that the scholar
research articles are a credible source. In the second genre, the video producer made this
argument that advertisements and marketing claim to have the answer on what we should eat, it
provides a series of rules on how to distinguish what is actually good for us. This video
establishes its credibility by coming from a very well known video production, TED-ED. People
know that this type of videos coming from this author are distinguished and credible.

PATHOS
The article author explains very detailed a series of consequences and explains what does a
certain diets consists of, this creates an emotional appeal to the audience, it constructs an
imaginative appeal of how could this result on their health. The message creates a state of
awareness because of all the detailed information that is given.
The TED-ED video includes the use of color, sound, and vivid drawings in which they explain
very much in detail how are certain promising diets could affect our health and how to
distinguish them. The uses of vivid drawings and the tone of the narrator, gives the audience the

sensation to have a better conscious of what they believe, and instead being guide from what
advertisements provide, people should look for experts on the field.

LOGOS
The first genre used Logos through its terminology by explaining the information in a
professional and credible way to the audience. The types of evidence that were used to support
the claims of Fad Diets being used to affect health, were by giving the names of certain
organizations that support the claim, the use of number to explain statistics, peoples experiences,
and recently reports made. The evidence is credible because the article presents a list of cited
references, also this article came from a reliable source. The second genre, the video provides the
history from where all this sort of diets came from, it gives examples of them with their effects,
and it uses clue words that audience could known as credible. This are not supported by the
audio, it just narrates the information. Evidence and studies is information that most people know
and believe is correct.

STRUCTURE AND DELIVERY

The way in which the information is organized in both of the genres varies, but the point is the
same. In the first genre, the author start on what the main point of the article is and also explains
the purpose of the whole investigation, this gives the audience an idea of what is the article going
to be about. The information is organized by titles, giving a list of certain diets with their
explanations, it is organized by paragraphs and the end it gives the overall conclusion. In the
second genre, the video starts with the introduction of the author, then begins with the issue and
starts explaining everything till the end of it. The video uses vivid drawings to explain what the

voice over is explaining. At the end the video concludes by persuading the audience to take an
action and the video ends.

CONCLUSION
Overall, both of the genres explained very we'll what the main topic was. The first genre was in a
written form and explained the information with much detail, but the second one gave more vivid
examples of what the concern was about. Each genre got to the same conclusion and wanted to
get to the same point which is Fad Diets are not what they seem. Fad Diets could trick people by
promising erroneous results, we should not cut one kind of food at all, we should measure the
amount and most important is to consult an expert.

REFERENCES
*Nutritional Aspects of Vegetarianism, Health Foods, and Fad Diets. (1977, March). American
Academy of Pediatrics, 460-465. Retrieved September 09, 2016, from http://0web.a.ebscohost.com.lib.utep.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=e8c89798-f7d0-44a9-951dbfaa1c7375f9@sessionmgr4008&vid=8&hid=4207

*T. (Producer). (2016, April 11). How to Spot a Fat Diet [Video file]. Retrieved September 10,
2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V15Z-yyiVg

*Biswas, M., & Padon, D. C. (2016). The Undergraduate Rhetoric and Writing Studies
Handbook. El Paso, TX: Write Across Borders