Nandipa wishes to maintain her heart health, strictly follows a plant.

Nandipa has considered consuming foods that increase HDL blood level (such as chicken or fish) to maintain her heart health. Here's why she is considering this change:

• She wishes to maintain heart health.
• Her LDL level is in the range considered optimal for heart health.
• Her HDL level is lower than is often considered optimal for heart health.
• Foods such as chicken or fish would increase her HDL blood level. (Mmm... fish.)
• Therefore, consuming foods such as chicken or fish will help Nandipa maintain heart health.

One thing that jumps out immediately from this breakdown is that there's no connection between LDL and HDL. We know that for optimal heart health, one should meet the optimal range for each type of cholesterol. But as far as we can tell, each type impacts heart health independently. This means that if we're analyzing the impact of consuming HDL via food, we shouldn't take into account the role of LDL unless we're given new information that explicitly links the two in their effect on heart health.


We're looking for anything that could strengthen or weaken the conclusion that consuming foods that increase HDL blood level will help Nandipa maintain her heart health. Let's begin eliminating choices:


This choice elaborates on what HDL literally does in the blood stream, but we already know that HDL is "good." Because (A) doesn't have any impact on Nandipa's conclusion (consume foods that contain HDL), we can eliminate it.


If true, this weakens the conclusion. Whereas the only thing we knew before is that more HDL is good for heart health, this choice tells us that the benefit of HDL is limited to its effect on LDL levels. Nandipa's LDL levels are already in the optimal range, so consuming foods with HDL will deliver no additional benefit to her heart health. Let's keep (B) around unless we see something more game-changing.


The conclusion has nothing to do with consumption of food containing LDL, and this choice doesn't provide information that links LDL to HDL. Eliminate (C).


We already know that Nandipa has a plant-based diet. This new information about what her diet does to the sum of LDL and HDL is irrelevant, because we're are analyzing whether Nandipa should modify that diet by consuming foods that contain HDL (such as chicken or fish). (D) doesn't impact the conclusion we care about, so we'll eliminate it.


Like answer choice (A), this choice underscores something we already know. Who cares how many foods have HDL? We want to know whether Nandipa should make the decision to begin eating these foods; it doesn't matter whether they're chicken, fish, eggs, steak, dosas, pie, bhindi masala, carne asada burritos, vanilla pudding, lamb tagine, Bavarian pretzels, or anything else that might increase HDL levels. Because this choice doesn't provide any information to strengthen or weaken Nandipa's choice to add foods containing HDL to her diet, we can eliminate it as well.

Unrelated: that last paragraph made me hungry.

Anyway, (B) is the best answer. It's the only one that directly addresses Nandipa's decision and provides new information to help us assess that decision.