Booktalk - Payback Time by Carl Dueker

Summary

Payback Time is a book about journalism, football, and secrets.  The main character, Daniel True, is cleverly nicknamed Mitch after the Michelin Man, because of his doughy body.  He is a determined reporter for his school newspaper and strives to be the best writer for the paper, even though he writes about everyday news that nobody reads.  The summer before his senior year of high school, a new editor of the paper is elected and she gives Mitch sports instead of daily news, because he is the best writer and everyone reads sports.  He despises the thought of writing for football because his ex-best friend, Horst Diamond, is the all star quarter back for the team.  They were best friends until Horst moved a couple blocks away and Mitch wanted to keep writing instead of play football.  Mitch hates Horst because he was the one who, on the first day of high school, got everyone to start calling him Michelin Man which eventually got shortened to Mitch. 

               While watching a practice with the photographer, Kimi, they notice a player off in the back of the field that they had never seen before.  He was throwing the ball perfectly and really far.  They were so shocked that Horst Diamond might have some competition that they ran across the field to Coach McNolty and asked him if they could interview the new guy.  He told them they were only allowed to interview Horst, because he was the best player.  This made Mitch and Kimi suspicious so they looked into it and found out that the new guy was named Angel Marichal, but had no legal documents at the school.  At a nearby school, the police snuck an officer into the school for a few months to make a huge drug bust, so Kimi and Mitch thought maybe they were doing the same thing at their school.  They were even more convinced he was a cop after he spent all of his time after school in a sketchy neighborhood and always sat with the druggies during lunch.  After doing loads of research, getting beat up, and threatened, Mitch finally found out Angel’s real name and produced an article about Angel and then he found out the truth.

My Opinion

                I enjoyed reading this book because it had a lot of descriptions of football games, which is always fun to read about and experience, but it also had a lot of suspense which made the book really interesting.  Even if you don’t know anything about football, you would be able to read this book because it isn’t exclusively based on football.  The entire time reading the book I was trying to figure out for myself who Angel Marichal was and why he was at Mitch’s school.  It had some good scenes of violence that spiced up the book, like when Mitch got beat up a few times by gangsters and it was pretty sweet.   

Junk Food Article #1

Summary
In this article, it discusses Obama's intentions for removing junk food completely from school.  He claims that childhood obesity is mostly caused by the schools selling junk and fatty foods in cafeterias and vending machines.  He plans on getting rid of Snickers, Pepsi, and french fries to attempt to ween students away from unhealthy foods.  In addition to eliminating these foods, the new rule will require schools to provide many more nutritious foods.  The cost of this new rule is projected to be about $12 billion.  They believe removing all junk food from the schools will significantly drop the statistics of childhood obesity.

My Opinion
Even if the Obama Administration sets up this ban on schools and spend billions of dollars trying to get junk food out of school, it will just end up being a waste of time.  There will be some students that will always want junky food because that is what they have always eaten, so they would just find a different way to get it into school.  It isn't up to the schools to decide whether or not the students are overweight, it's up to the parents and the students themselves.  Schools use the money to help pay for things such as sports and extracurricular activities.  Without the junk filled vending machines, that money wouldn't just appear somewhere else.  This campaign to get rid of junk food is just a waste of time and money, which the government clearly doesn't have anyway.

Argument #10

10.  Claim:  Focusing gym classes on physical fitness and good health is a better solution than eliminating all junk food from schools.

Evidence:  A school district in Naperville, Illinois, that focused gym classes on teaching students physical fitness, health, and wellness instead of sports skills found that only three percent of its ninth graders were overweight. 

Warrant: Focusing gym classes on fitness and good health is a much better idea then the traditional gym class of playing basketball and dodgeball everyday.  Let's face it, not all people are born to be athletes and sports prodigies, so why base an everyday class on playing sports? We have a weight problem in America and teaching people, beginning with kids, how to stay healthy and fit, then that is just one step closer to fighting obesity and other health issues.  Schools should give students a choice of a traditional gym class, strength training class, or a gym class focused on physical fitness and good health, but all of them should teach students how to make good decisions for their health. 

Argument #5

5.  Claim:  When healthy choices are available along with junk food, students will tend to select the healthy options.

Evidence:  On a typical day at River Grove High School, the lunch featured grilled chicken breasts, rice, steamed broccoli, and a fruit cup of fresh watermelon cubes.  The cafeteria reported that 819 out of 1,120 students purchased this lunch selection, while the rest selected less healthy options.

Warrant:  There is proof from River Grove High School that more than half of the students chose the healthier options.  However, students won't purchase the healthier foods when the schools jack up the prices.  A small salad at my school costs $4.00 - $4.50 but fries and a burger costs something like $3.75.  Why would a student purchase something small for $4.50 when they could buy two things for less money, and be more full? I think healthhy foods cost the school a little extra money to buy, so they take advantage of the fact that students don't typically have too much money and put the healthier food just out of reach for the students.  I can guarantee if healthy food was the same or cheaper then junk food, students would buy the healthy choice more often than junk, just like the 819 out of 1,120 students at River Grove High School. 

Argument #3

3.  Claim:  The sausages served in the free and reduced-price breakfast program should be considered junk food.

Evidence:  Inexpensive sausages of the sort served in these breakfasts contain up to 50% fat and have a salt content of 2-3 %.  They are additionally cured with salt and sodium nitrite, making them very salty.  The meat itself comes from every part of the pig, meaning that a sausage may include bone remnants, intestines, internal organs, ground hooves, and other parts that few people would eat by choice.

Warrant: We already have an obesity problem so considering something with up to 50% fat healthy would be a joke.  The salt content, being 2-3% of the whole sausage, would lead to heart and blood problems if too many are eaten on a daily basis.  Most people really wouldn't consider eating these things if they knew it had THAT much salt and pig parts in it to begin with.  The reduced-price sausages should be considered junk food because of their clear health hazards.  Healthy sausages would not contain that much fat or disgusting parts. By choice, people would not eat those parts of a pig and hopefully would consider their weight before eating that much fat content.