ARTICLEEE
Analysis Essay
“Reading the coffee beans”
By Davin Tjandra
Has anyone of you ever tried coffee before? Or do anyone ever concern with their own health? What if you are just passing by and read a headline of a health journal in the news-stand that state that coffee is dangerous and can increase a heart attack by 36%? If you don’t care, Bernadine Healy cares a lot. Just for your information, Bernadine Healy is columnist, a woman activist, a doctor, former Head of the Research Institute of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, a former director of NIH (National Institutes of Health) and an ex-politician. She, as a former researcher, criticizes the health news for its confusing words. In her in 2006
www.usnews.com article titled “Reading the Coffee Beans” she effectively addresses confused readers by using facts and data.
Healy’s claim and purpose is clearly stated in paragraph 6, “These latest coffee findings remind us that we all have individual metabolism quirks, some genetic and some acquired, which contribute to our personal traits and taste.” Her purpose and claim is making confuse readers realize that our body is complex and we cannot make our own interpretation about things [not just coffee] that we do not know for sure.
Healy didn’t make many assumptions in her article. She always state her opinion based on facts and data. The only assumption she state is, “There may be no greater offender than mixed messages that pour in regularly about what some consider America’s national beverage—coffee.” Although many of you think that coffee is a national beverages but not everyone think it is such a great offender.
Healy appeal to the reader’s emotions by telling a story about history of coffee. Coffee has been a debate from a long time ago. Came from Arabian Desert it soon be a favorite drinks from everyone. She state that, “Coffee has been cast as vice and virtue for hundreds of years.” She want to explain that coffee has been accused as a bad guy long time ago as she state that people tend to blame ,”its klatches[Coffee shop] for inciting of gossip and rebellion.” But in the end she state coffee is not a villain by using a holy figures, “The pope insisted on tasting the delicious elixir and baptized it rather than outlawing the drink.” By making a story with a twist ending, she tried make her audience interested.
Healy uses no ethical appeal for her essay. She never states a personal opinion about what wrong or right. It is obvious for an article about health where there was no ethical appeal required. That is why this absence of ethos doesn’t weaken or destroy her essay.
Looking at Healy background, it is obvious that almost all of her evidence is a logos. Since for a doctor and researcher, logical appeal was the most custom for them. She uses the logos almost everywhere from paragraph 3, 4, 5, and 6 from the total of 7 paragraphs. That is over half of the total paragraph. She uses fact about advantages and disadvantages of coffee in paragraph 3 and 4. She also uses percentage in health journal, “two to three cups a day coincided with 36 percent increase….” We also can see the example of logical appeal to strengthen her claim in paragraph 6 when she state,” For example, there are post-menopausal woman for whom estrogen replacement works wonders, while others feel awful or gain no benefit..”
Looking at Healy’s tone, I find that she use many implicit tone to lead the readers to her side. In her earlier paragraph, instead of explaining the reader about coffee’s complexity, Healy spends a lot of time explaining the advantages and disadvantages of coffee. She tried to make us believe that coffee is good for our body and its disadvantages didn’t really matter. She states advantages of coffee as, “A shot of java stimulates an adrenaline rush and jazzes up nerve connection, making for more energy and sharper brains … lower the Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.” She cleverly adds “Yet there’s long been a nagging fear.” before she stated the disadvantages of coffee, “Caffeine can make a heart race or skip a few beats and can add a few points to blood pressure.” By adding that short statement, she tried to make us believe that coffee disadvantages are unproven and undependable. After we convince and lean to pro-coffee side, JAMA headlines which state that coffee is bad for our body will make us question the headlines. She state that,”By contrast headlines generally ignored the other coffee drinkers who were the fast caffeine metabolizers and had fewer heart attacks.” That makes us agree with her opinion.
Healy rarely addresses the opposition. Her intended target is common people who likes to drinks coffee or people who confuse about health journal so she doesn’t really care about the JAMA or other health journal who were her opposition. She states JAMA headlines on paragraph 5,”JAMA study is a spoiler if you look at some of the headlines.” only to attack the headlines. She also attacks other health journal by saying, “variations still unrecognized are bound to account for many of the inconsistent medical reports.” By stating this, she blames the journal for its mixed information for common readers.
Healy does qualify her claim on paragraph 7 when she said that, “Until we doctors have simple and reliable tests to profile the genes and other markers that define metabolism, prudence is your best guest.” This statement makes us realize that even we know that, “we all have individual metabolism quirks.” there are no dependable way to test our genes.
Healy’s
www.usnew.com article is effective overall and it really makes us more criticize about reading a health journal. Health is very important to us and in the near future I believe that there are many ways easy ways to identify genes that defines metabolism. We can just hope that health journal will deliver more important information rather than conflicting ones.
