15. "The Dangers of Eating Late at Night"

     With such an active daily basis, people today are constantly busy checking e-mails and answering phone calls. Consequently, dinner time has significantly changed from past decades to today. Dr. Koufman, a physician who specializes in voice disorders and acid reflux, states that over the past decades, the time of the evening meal has been trending later and later among his patients. Work is followed by late night exercising or shopping, causing people to return home late. Consequently, this has lead most people today to eat dinner at a relatively late time. According to Dr. Koufman, dinner must be served at around 6-7 P.M. for a healthy diet. However, most of his patients were dining at around 10-11 P.M. This significant time change has increased the acid reflux epidemic in the American society. Acid reflux symptoms include postnasal dip, hoarseness, difficulty swallowing, chronic throat clearing, coughing and asthma. These dangerous symptoms has been increasing rapidly and will continue to increase with the absence of change in the dining hours of Americans.
     The author of this article, Jamie A. Koufman, writes to increase awareness on the dangers of eating late at night. In proposing her message, Koufman is very effective in her evidences supporting her claim. A very effective factor was that she herself is a physician specialized in voice disorders and acid reflux, having first-hand experience with what she is talking about. Thus, to support her claim, she uses personal experiences with her recent patients, giving the article a strong credibility. Koufman's article is relatively short and straight to the point engaging the reader to continue reading. Her word choices are easy to comprehend as many times she uses informal language. Overall, I was well interested in her article to the point of actually researching on acid reflux. All to say, Koufman succeeds in conveying the dangers of eating late at night using good word choices and effective writing.

  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/opinion/sunday/the-dangers-of-eating-late-at-night.html