No More Burritos For You

No More Burritos For You

            Have you ever asked yourself after eating a delicious meal, “Wow, how is this so good?” Well, Chipotle’s answer would be their secret recipe of harmful bacteria. Chipotle has been encountering continuous cases of food poisoning from their so-called “quality food.” An article published by the Huffington Post discusses their food outbreak. While reading this article, I noticed how poorly the article’s map was. The map showed the number of people in certain states who got contaminated, but the design and style was completely flawed. Between this inefficient map and the mistake that Google Maps made mislabeling Nigeria for Niger, do maps ever get made correctly? Unfortunately, Chipotle’s struggle to stay within the health sanitation laws continues to fail. To this day, Chipotle still struggles with terrible cases of food contamination and poisoning. So to summarize this essay, never eat there ever again…I am just kidding. However, all jokes aside, I believe one should definitely take caution while consuming Chipotle’s food, especially through the way the mapmaker of this article portrayed the countrywide contamination.  

            The map displayed in the Huffington Post’s article does an incredibly poor job displaying accurate information and will be further explained in the following paragraphs. This article in particular talks about how in December of 2015, 120 Boston College students got sick after eating at a local Chipotle restaurant. They all got sick with the highly contagious norovirus, which is considered the most common cause of food disease outbreaks in the U.S. Prior to this outbreak, the casual and fast burrito chain made another 52 people across nine different states sick with E.Coli. For those who are unaware, E.Coli is typically caused by contaminated food that has been exposed to the E.Coli bacteria. Some leading symptoms may include abdominal pain, severe nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. To add the cherry on top, Chipotle faced countless lawsuits from other norovirus outbreaks in California and Salmonella outbreaks in Minnesota, which affected at least 64 people in August of 2015. This is a problem because all of these bacterial related illnesses cause people to become extremely sick. People who are typically healthy and have strong immune systems recover from these illnesses within about a week, but those who are elderly, extremely young or have weakened immune systems are at greater risk. Luckily, Chipotle contaminations have not lead to any deaths…yet.

            Shown above is the poorly designed map that this article included. I believe the way the mapmaker created this map is awfully hard to read, understand, and comprehend. I also believe it is extremely ineffective. The only information the reader is able to draw from the visual is the state the food poisoning outbreak occurred in. Not one piece of information from the map guides the reader to know what borough, town, or even province these contaminations occurred in. This does not help the reader in any way; it actually even hinders the audience's understanding of the issue. Additionally, the mapmaker decided to represent the areas where people got sick from Chipotle through circles. When closely analyzing the map, we are able to tell that the more people who got food poisoning from Chipotle, the bigger the circle got. However, this is a flawed design because, for example, when only 27 people were affected by the E.Coli outbreak in Washington State, the circle depicted on the map covers almost the entire state of Washington. This is extremely incorrect as only 27 people got sick in the entire state, not 7.406 million people, which is the estimate of their entire state population. I believe the mapmaker intentionally created this map to scare its readers into thinking the whole state got food poisoning from Chipotle because that is what it looks like when one quickly glances over the map, which is what most people tend to do. I believe a better way to illustrate the information the mapmaker was trying to portray would be through a thematic map, as seen in Knox and Marston’s Chapter 1 reading. This type of map is color-coded so, for example, if 20 people in one specific Chipotle location got sick, it would show a more accurate representation of how many people got sick and in what areas. After all, according to the beginning of Maps Blossom in the Springtime of the State by Denis Woods, maps are supposed to show the reality of the world. Maps offer us so much, but what it really gives us is a true sense of reality that we could not get anywhere else. 

            Putting aside the poorly designed map, there have still been constant issues with food poisoning over the years. In August of 2018, Chipotle had to shut down one of their locations in Powell, Ohio when dozens of people said they got sick after eating their food. Around 250 people reported online and 350 people called saying that they received food poisoning from their food. This was yet another norovirus outbreak. As a result, Chipotle has lost 20%of their most loyal customers due to these unfortunate, yet ongoing, food issues. I understand there could be many possible counter-arguments, like people backing up Chipotle and saying those people who got “contaminated” by their food were sick beforehand; however, truth of the matter is, these contaminations kept occurring one after the other throughout countless years, so, therefore, one can be confident when saying that their food was infected.

            In conclusion, it is extremely important to be careful about the food you consume and the maps you encounter. It is crucial that you analyze all maps because we have learned that the majority of mapmakers have no idea what they’re doing. Of course, I am joking, but the reality is that maps can be deceiving, so take time to look, understand, and comprehend what it is really trying to say.