Prep test41 oct 2003 section 1 #18 Forum

[ekamy]

is anyone could explain to me why the answer choice is E? Thank you, guys

[GoldenGloves]

The conclusion of this argument is very strong: "clearly there still are a lot of people completely ignoring the health recommendation." We need only to know that people have reduced their consumption outside of restaurants to refute such a strong a claim, and answer choice (E) tells us that, although people still patronize steak restaurants, they have heeded the health officials by reducing their cholesterol intake in their at home diets. As a result, it may be that the recommendation is not being ignored.

[policestate1234]

The first thing you should notice is that this is a very weak argument in general.

The argument begins with the statement that health officals are now recommending that people should reduce the amount of foods that they eat that are high in cholesterol and gives an example of a food to reduce, which is red meat. So far so good.

The argument then states that the recent decline in the total consumption of beef indicates that many people are following this recommendation. Okay it's not a very strong proof that people are following the recommendation but I'll buy it.

Restaurants specializing in steaks are flourshing despite the fact that there is an overall decline in the restaurant market. This is proof that there is still a lot of people completely ignoring the health recommendation. The first thought I had was that maybe people are reducing their intake of cholesterol in other ways.


a) this is not relevent to the argument.
b) It doesn't assume this at all. The argument is in fact saying that those eating at the steak restaurants need to reduce their consumption of beef.
c) The argument doesn't assume anything about the price of beef.
d) The argument doesn't mistake the correlation
e) Bingo

[ekamy]

awesome!