Being in athletic training as my major I have seen a lot of athletes. While having the opportunity to work with the football team at the University of South Carolina I got to meet the sports nutritionist. From him I learned a lot about nutrition and football and how much of an important role that it plays into the success of an athlete. Each collegiate athlete is different so each food plan or diet for each athlete must be different. Having just a general plan to lose or gain weight will not work nearly as well as individualized plans for each athlete that needs to maintain, gain, or lose weight in their time at USC. Having to work closely and alongside nutritionist in sports have influenced me to write about this. I would like to dig deeper into sports nutrition and see why it is so effective at a collegiate level. Most people believe that players get big when they go to college because they start to lift. I think that most of the time it is because they get to shift what they are eating to achieve their goals or gaining muscle and losing weight rather than just hitting the weight room. Pursuing a career in athletic training I will have to work alongside more sports nutritionist and I believe if I understand more about what they do and how important they are to collegiate athletics then I will respect them more. Nutrition is important in collegiate athletics because it gets the athletes eating right, sports nutritionist can write a plan for individual athletes based on their needs, and nutrition plays an important role in gaining muscle which is crucial for most college athletes.  The Carolina Rhetoric has some great articles about food and how to use rhetoric and other elements well in a piece of writing. 

In The Pleasures of Eating by: Wendell Berry, Wendell explains how people take the easy route when it comes to food and does not really look into what they are eating but only what taste good and what is easiest to get. Not what is actually good for you or food that has been through safe processes? Wendell highlights how unsafe processed food is that a normal American consumes daily. Wendell brings to attention that people do not care as much about quality if it can be made fast and easy. Wendell also talks about how unhealthy our food is based on how we don't care how far it took to get there, where it came from, or how processed it is just because it makes things easier for us rather than enjoyable. The Pleasures of Eating is a very biased article about the typical American person just believing everything they hear and see about food rather than actually looking a little deeper into what we are actually eating. Sports nutritionist look a lot at the food that they provide to athletes and I believe everyone should. Factory farming has become very popular in America and could be one of the greatest mistakes America has made. 

In Fear Factories: The Case For Compassionate Conservatism- For Animals by: Matthew Sully Factory farming is put into perspective and shows us as Americans where most of our food comes from and how badly the animals we eat are treated before they appear on our plates. Sully brings in a lot of outside sources to validate all his arguments against factory farming and how animals are treated throughout these processes. Sully Brings up how in politics animal abuse of factory farming areas is allowed but if there is any type of abuse towards house pets such as a dog then people are charged with a serious crime. Again here I this article sully talks about how factory farming is more efficient and easier rather than safe or organic. This article is very biased against factory farming but Sully's confidence and outside sources made it very easy to believe his claim and for people to join his side of the argument. Sports nutritionist mostly use organic or local places to retrieve the food that they give to their athletes. At USC the sports nutritionist at football travels days before the team to try and pick the best local places that he would like all of the food provided to the team come from. Factory farming is taking away from our local farmers and businesses and I hope people look deeper into where they are getting their food. Looking into local establishments and grocery stores more people have forgotten how to cook some good and healthy meals for themselves. Joel Salatin shows us how to make healthy choices that is easy for everyone to shop for and prepare.

In Joel Salatin's Declare Your Independence the focus is to show people how bad our eating habits are and steps to fixing them. Salatin lays out almost a step by step program to become a healthier individual and how to identify the problem of how we let food get to where it is today, then how to make better decisions about food and become a healthier person. Again this article talks about the food industry and how they process, and make food simple so people will buy it. Salatin is showing us that we have a choice to do what is right and say no to the food industry, buy local food, and make our own healthy meals with the resources we do have access to. Salatin tells one how to make the best decisions not only what's beast for our health but also what's best for the environment by planting and cooking your own meals rather than buying precooked and processed meals from the store. This Author uses Titles before every paragraph to give the reader an exact outline of exactly what he is trying to say so it is easy to understand and follow to help make for a better diet. Making this article very appealing and good for people to mark and come back to a part of the text because of how it is broken up. Salatin and the other authors have shown us a lot about food and what better and healthier choices we need to make for ourselves.

My research question is a very arguable topic that is very big in collegiate sports talk. Many people believe that nutrition is important in collegiate athletics but that having a sports nutritionist is a waste because anyone can do it. These articles highlight that America as a whole has a terrible way of getting hold of good quality food that is not already premade, packaged, and processed for every meal. This analysis shows that it must be hard to be a nutritionist who has to be aware of all of the temptations and easy ways for their clients or athletes to pull away from their special plans or diets. Sports nutritionist have a hard time scheduling a meal plan around work, class, and how easy it is for their clients to obtain good, fresh, and healthy meals to fit their diets appropriately. These sources have showed me what the food industry has done to food as we know it and that is very expensive and very hard to get away from the food industry and have successful and healthy meals. I don't know how I could revise my research question to make it more arguable or easier to connect to. Learning more about where food comes from and how unhealthy food choices most people make will truly make me second think my food choices from now on and think about what I am actually eating and where it may come from.

