Before we walked into the health food bakery in Kent, Ohio, my companion told me I had to guess how old Maurice Drake was. The bells jangled as we walked through the front door of the bakery. The owner stepped out from the back of the bakery and introduced himself in a slightly raspy voice. Besides having an incredible presence about him, Maurice was a tall, built man, about six foot four inches. Under my estimation, regardless of the feeling I had that he hadn't had much sleep the night before, he looked like he was in top physical health. I couldn't find a wrinkle on his face; his skin looked firm and healthy. Twenty-nine was my first guess. Wrong, guess again. He couldn't be over thirty-five. Salzie laughed at my guess--wrong--Maurice Drake was in his fifties! I was in shock. What was his trick? Throughout this paper we will explore Maurice's health tactics and how they affect the body.

This introduction is aimed at an audience interested in health and beauty. The audience can be both male and female, even though it discusses a male example at the beginning. I would guess the audience would be a young adult to middle aged individual who is attracted to topics on physical health.

WATCO of consistent exercise and living a vegetarian lifestyle on the body?

My enthymeme for this introduction is: Living a vegetarian lifestyle complete with daily exercise strengthens the body's constitution against the expansion of incapacitating years because living a vegetarian lifestyle complete with daily exercise maintains muscles, increases the body's metabolic rate, and strengthens the body's immune system.

The implicit assumtion in this enthymeme is: Anything that maintains muscles, increases the body's metabolic rate, and strengthens the body's immune system, also strengthens the body's constitution against the expansion of incapacitating years. I feel like this implicit assumption is easy for the reader to agree with.

My audience is individuals who rely on nutrient supplements for optimal health. My 'What Are The Consequences Of . . .' (WATCO) question is: What are the consequences of relying on nutrient supplements for optimal health on an individual's actual optimal health? In this question the A term is 'relying on nutrient supplements for optimal health,' and the B term is 'an individual's actual optimal health'.

From this WATCO question, I craft the enthymeme: Relying on nutrient supplements for optimal health does not produce it because nutrient supplements in natural foods are absorbed better than nutrients in supplements. The C term that is added here is 'nutrients in natural foods are absorbed better than nutrients in supplements'. Within this enthymeme I imply that whatever nutrients are absorbed better also produce optimal health. Within this assumption there is also the assumption that foods chosen in an individual's diet will have the adequate nutrients available for absorption.

I think my implicit assumption is a solid assumption. If you don't absorb a nutrient, it can do nothing for your body; whereas, if your body absorbs a nutrient, the nutrient can do something for your body. Pretty simple and pretty acceptable for an audience. While this implicit assumption would not be a problem in a persuasive manuscript, the reader would have the right to ask if there were certain nutrients that could be over-absorbed in natural foods. My counter-argument would state that overdoesing on a natural food is likely only in the most extreme cases; whereas, it is much easier to overdoes on supplements, which do not have to have any sort of check on safety. The chances for nutrient toxicity in foods found on our table is almost non-existent while on the other hand toxicity from nutrient supplements is much more common.