Couples who cook together at home enjoy many benefits over dining out

Couples who cook together at home enjoy many benefits over dining out including consuming choice ingredients and fresh produce, along with enjoying convenience, the comforts of home, and eating in a familiar environment.

A.Couples who cook together at home enjoy many benefits over dining out including consuming choice ingredients and fresh produce, along with enjoying convenience, the comforts of home, and eating in a familiar environment.

* Here we can see -
enjoy many benefits.... consuming choice ingredients.....enjoying convenience....eating in a familiar environment.
notice the verb structure: enjoy + consuming + enjoying + eating ----> unparallell with base form of verb and gerunds.


B.Couples who cook at home enjoy many benefits over dining out including the consumption of choice ingredients, fresh produce, along with enjoying the convenience and comfort of eating in a familiar environment.

* Same as A.
enjoy + the consumption + enjoying ----> unparallell with the base form of verb, noun and gerund.


C.Couples cooking at home enjoy many benefits over dining out that include consuming choice ingredients and fresh produce, along with the convenience and comfort of a familiar environment.

* enjoy + consuming + convenience ----> also unparallell

D.Couples who cook at home together enjoy many benefits over dining out including those of consuming choice ingredients and fresh produce, along with enjoying the convenience and comfort of eating in a familiar environment.

* "benefits over dining out including those of consuming" ----> here a comma splice (,) should be used before 'including' as it is used as a prepositional phrase here.


E.Couples who cook at home enjoy many benefits over dining out, including those of consuming choice ingredients and fresh produce, as well as enjoying the convenience and comfort of eating in a familiar environment. (correct)

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Can someone explain why "including" in option E as it is written is not modifying "couples who cook at home" but is instead modifying "benefits"?

IMO option D is the correct answer.

sayantanc2k daagh
A close look:
Couples who cook "together"- Together is eliminated in E.
Is that to avoid redundancy?

Poor question, not GMAT worthy imo. Experts can weigh in

In option D or E, "THose" refers to benefits.
And, after applying parallelism rule, it does not sound appropriate to say "benefits of enjoying the convenience and comfort of eating in a familiar environment"

I really doubt about OA .

The explanation provided is not so clear. Can someone please share the detailed explanation as it's really confusing with so many sentences in parallel along with the usage of gerunds and verbs.

Hi GMATNinja Brent Kavitha please can someone explain this question to me? The question seems very confusing and I am not understanding any of the explanations provided above.

Couples who cook at home: means either they cook together or any of them cooks for both.
Couples who cook at home together: pretty straight they must cook together.

Option E changes the intended message. No?

"together" is missing in option E. So I crossed it out from the potential answers. can someone please explain this?

Hello RohiniK,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, the use of "together" is actually unnecessary here; it implies that couples enjoy certain benefits if both members of the couple cook together, but the benefits listed are such that logically the couple would enjoy them, even if only one member cooked at a time.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team