Greg Critser Critique

Critique for Greg Critser's "Too Much of a Good Thing"

In "Too Much of a Good Thing," Greg Critser, author of Supersize, pushes his opinion on the rising epidemic of obesity in America. Critser cites the devastating statistics on this rise in size to further the impact of his point. By stating the many problems that amass to an obesity epidemic, Critser is able to propose his remedy to the masses. Critser conveys that stigmatizing overeating is all that society must undertake to solve this tragedy. Critser is careful to distinguish between the sin and the sinner, but does not apologize when pushing the fact that we need to teach children to eat less. Citing statistics on the shocking increase in the percentages of childhood obesity, Critser

He points out that the reason our predecessors never struggled with this problem is gluttony and overeating were "vilified as on of the seven deadly sins" (Critser 162). Therefore, people were scared away from overeating because it was an ungodly sin. According to the author of "Seven Deadly Sins" there are two elements to eating and hunger. The first is the natural instinct to eat when hungry, meanwhile the second being the love of taste and indulgence, is what is up to the judgement of the consumer (Seven Deadly Sins). With this being known, Critser's point of gluttony is said more towards the second element of eating where one overindulges in the love of food and becomes out of control. In Gerard Anthony Riley’s Study on the effects of stigma and blame of unsafe sex among Ghanaian citizens, he found that the more informed a person was, the less their chances were for contracting HIV/AIDS (Riley, 1). This leads to the idea that as we begin to educate people more and more on the topic of overeating, fewer people will participate in this activity. Both authors effectually support and convey that too much food is truly a bad thing, furthermore stating that Critser is correct in his claims on