Choosing Organic
By: Kayla Ray
Informative Speech
SC105: T Th 3:30
Mrs. Becker
March 4, 2013

General Purpose: To inform

Specific Purpose: I want my audience to understand the importance of purchasing and consuming organic food.

Thesis: Choosing to purchase and consume organic food is a smart and healthy choice for you and your family.

Formal Outline of Speech

Introduction

I. “The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000.” Food activist, Michael Pollan, makes this statement as the introduction to a documentary titled Food Inc., which discusses the way food is being produced today in America.

A. Now, there are many choices that can be made when trying to eat healthy.
a. This also leads to significantly higher nutrients that are present in the yolk.

2. To add to that, we can look at the picture of the two whole chickens. Which one would you choose?

a. Notice the extreme size of the one on the left due to growth hormones and corn feed.

b. Then notice the thick layer of yellowish fat covering the skin….GROSS!

C. But the biggest issue is what we find is in our beef. Many diseases are found in non-organic beef simply because cows are not evolved to digest corn. As Michael Pollan states in an interview on www.pbs.org, as soon as you introduce corn, the animal is liable to get sick. You start giving them antibiotics, because as soon as you give them corn, you've disturbed their digestion, and they're apt to get sick, so you then have to give them drugs. That's how you get in this whole cycle of drugs and meat.

1. In the documentary, Food Inc., they tell a story about a boy named Kevin.

a. According to Kevin’s story, published on www.foodborneillness.org, Kevin had eaten three hamburgers in the week prior to his illness and died twelve days later from E. coli O157:H7. He was only 2 years, 8 months and 1 day old.

b. Also stated in the article written by Kevin’s mom, Barbara Kowalcyk, each year in the United States, thousands of Americans suffer and die