A group of experimental subjects participated in an intermittent fast

Question

A group of experimental subjects participated in an "intermittent fasting" study, under which they ate all of their food for the day within six hours of waking up. The subjects consumed the same number of calories as they normally did throughout an entire day and did not change their exercise patterns. Nearly all of the subjects lost a significant amount of weight during the study. It can thus be concluded that eating all of one's food within a relatively short period of time causes the body to burn more calories.

Which of the following would be most useful to establish in evaluating the argument?

A. Are people more likely to consume low-calorie foods early in the day than at night?
B. Is the practice of intermittent fasting safe and free of major side effects?
C. Are most people able to consume as many calories within an interval of six hours as they normally would over the course of an entire day?
D. Will people following an intermittent fasting protocol feel substantially hungrier than those who space out their meals more regularly?
E. Does the body burn calories faster when food is eaten earlier in a person's waking hours than when it is eaten later?

shoumkrish · Answer

A.  The people are consuming the same amount of calorie. Out of scope. 
B.  Major side effects is again out of scope 
C.  The idea is to establish whether "eating all of one's food within a relatively short period of time causes the body to burn more calories". Whether most people are able to consume within the interval of six hours is out of scope. 
D.  Whether the people will feel hungrier is again out of scope. 
E.  If people burn more calories in the waking hours than in the later hours, then they might not burn more calories . Correct.

sobhark · Answer

Hi guys,
Please correct me if i'm wrong. =)

Goal : Evaluate if eating calories within a short time period ----> Body burns more calories

A. Are people more likely to consume low-calorie foods early in the day than at night?
  Irreverent to the argument  
B. Is the practice of intermittent fasting safe and free of major side effects?
  OFS - since the argument does not considering side effects  
C. Are most people able to consume as many calories within an interval of six hours as they normally would over the course of an entire day?
  Irreverent to the argument  
D. Will people following an intermittent fasting protocol feel substantially hungrier than those who space out their meals more regularly?
  Irreverent to the argument  
E. Does the body burn calories faster when food is eaten earlier in a person's waking hours than when it is eaten later?
  Correct - since all subjects in the experiment eat within 6 hours of waking up, we don't know whether the result would be the same
if subjects eat at different time

akshayk · Answer

Argument 
People ate the same amount of food, yet they lost weight.
Difference - They ate food within 6 hours of waking Vs. spreading their food across the entire day.
To Evaluate - Whether eating all the food within the first few hours helped with the weight loss?

A - OUT. Argument mentions they ate the same amount of calories.
B - OUT. This is irrelevant to this argument.
C - OUT. Argument mentions they ate the same amount of calories.
D - OUT. People feeling hungrier than those who eat throughout the day is irrelevant. Being hungry doesn't result in weight loss.
E - CORRECT. If the body burns more calories when food is eaten earlier in the day, then it explains why these participants had a weight loss.

E is the answer.

abhishekdadarwal2009 · Answer

A group of experimental subjects participated in an "intermittent fasting" study, under which they ate all of their food for the day within six hours of waking up. The subjects consumed the same number of calories as they normally did throughout an entire day and did not change their exercise patterns. Nearly all of the subjects lost a significant amount of weight during the study. It can thus be concluded that eating all of one's food within a relatively short period of time causes the body to burn more calories.

Which of the following would be most useful to establish in evaluating the argument?

A. Are people more likely to consume low-calorie foods early in the day than at night? this may be a good point but it is general and does not provide details required to evaluate.
 B. Is the practice of intermittent fasting safe and free of major side effects? side effects are not evaluated
 C. Are most people able to consume as many calories within an interval of six hours as they normally would over the course of an entire day? this is giving in the argument itself that people consumed the calories
 D. Will people following an intermittent fasting protocol feel substantially hungrier than those who space out their meals more regularly? feeling hungry is out of scope.
 E. Does the body burn calories faster when food is eaten earlier in a person's waking hours than when it is eaten later? Correct parameter to evaluate the consumption and burning of calories ratio.

gmatexam439 · Answer

Here is the OE from MGMAT:

(1) Identify the Question Type

The question stem asks what would be most useful in evaluating the argument, so this is an Evaluate the Argument question.

(2) Deconstruct the Argument

Subjects who ate all their food within six hours of waking lost significant weight. Why did this happen? The author concludes that eating within a condensed time period must prompt the body to burn more calories. However, there are many other possibilities that the author doesn’t address. Maybe the subjects ate differently or engaged in activities that burned more calories. True, the argument states that calorie consumption and exercise patterns remained the same, but perhaps the source of the calories matters, or perhaps the subjects burned calories through non-exercise activities (standing up at a concert vs. sitting down at a restaurant). Maybe it was important that the subjects didn’t eat before going to bed, or maybe eating in one short burst prevents the body from digesting all of the food.

(3) State the Goal

In an Evaluate the Argument question, the goal is to choose a question or piece of information that would make it easier to determine if the conclusion is valid. What would test the author’s assumptions here? There are so many possibilities that it’s difficult to predict exactly what the right answer choice will say, but it should introduce some alternative explanation for the subject’s weight loss. Notice that it won’t help to look at overall calorie consumption, because the argument states that the subjects consumed the same number of calories as before.

(4) Work from Wrong to Right

(A If this were true, perhaps the subjects would have consumed fewer calories, but the premise states that calorie consumption remained the same, so this is out of scope.

(B) The conclusion is only about the effect of eating in short periods on calorie consumption. The argument doesn’t make any claims about safety, nor does it advocate the practice of intermittent fasting, so it isn’t necessary to determine whether this practice is safe to evaluate the argument.

(C) Even if most people are unable to fit a full day’s calories into six hours, the subjects in the study did just that. The argument is about the effect of eating all one’s calories over a short period, not whether intermittent fasting could be adopted more widely without calorie reduction, so it’s not necessary to make this determination.

(D) The argument is only concerned with the effects of timing on calorie burning, so hunger is out of scope.

(E) CORRECT. This could provide an alternative explanation for the study result. Perhaps people burned more calories simply because they ate earlier in the day and not because of the condensed time period. If this wouldn’t happen in the evening, perhaps the author’s conclusion is not true in general. For instance, perhaps consuming all one’s calories in the last six hours of the day would lead to weight gain, not loss. In that case, it wouldn’t appear that simply eating over a reduced period of time lead to increased calorie burning.

dabaobao · Answer

Official Solution (Credit: Manhattan Prep)

(1) Identify the Question Type

The question stem asks what would be most useful in evaluating the argument, so this is an Evaluate the Argument question.

(2) Deconstruct the Argument

Subjects who ate all their food within six hours of waking lost significant weight. Why did this happen? The author concludes that eating within a condensed time period must prompt the body to burn more calories. However, there are many other possibilities that the author doesn’t address. Maybe the subjects ate differently or engaged in activities that burned more calories. True, the argument states that calorie consumption and exercise patterns remained the same, but perhaps the source of the calories matters, or perhaps the subjects burned calories through non-exercise activities (standing up at a concert vs. sitting down at a restaurant). Maybe it was important that the subjects didn’t eat before going to bed, or maybe eating in one short burst prevents the body from digesting all of the food.

(3) State the Goal

In an Evaluate the Argument question, the goal is to choose a question or piece of information that would make it easier to determine if the conclusion is valid. What would test the author’s assumptions here? There are so many possibilities that it’s difficult to predict exactly what the right answer choice will say, but it should introduce some alternative explanation for the subject’s weight loss. Notice that it won’t help to look at overall calorie consumption, because the argument states that the subjects consumed the same number of calories as before.

(4) Work from Wrong to Right

(A If this were true, perhaps the subjects would have consumed fewer calories, but the premise states that calorie consumption remained the same, so this is out of scope.

(B) The conclusion is only about the effect of eating in short periods on calorie consumption. The argument doesn’t make any claims about safety, nor does it advocate the practice of intermittent fasting, so it isn’t necessary to determine whether this practice is safe to evaluate the argument.

(C) Even if most people are unable to fit a full day’s calories into six hours, the subjects in the study did just that. The argument is about the effect of eating all one’s calories over a short period, not whether intermittent fasting could be adopted more widely without calorie reduction, so it’s not necessary to make this determination.

(D) The argument is only concerned with the effects of timing on calorie burning, so hunger is out of scope.

(E) CORRECT. This could provide an alternative explanation for the study result. Perhaps people burned more calories simply because they ate earlier in the day and not because of the condensed time period. If this wouldn’t happen in the evening, perhaps the author’s conclusion is not true in general. For instance, perhaps consuming all one’s calories in the last six hours of the day would lead to weight gain, not loss. In that case, it wouldn’t appear that simply eating over a reduced period of time lead to increased calorie burning.

akshaykotha · Answer

Well, I am not convinced with the official explanation for this question. In evaluate questions, providing alternate explanation will not solve the purpose. In option E, the comparison is between burning calories when eaten early and burning calories when eaten late. If either of them wins, it doesn't evaluate the conclusion where more calories are burned because of short period of intake.

Please shed some light on my line of thought. This is first-of-a-kind question in the 'Evaluate' category which threw me off.

pkshankar · Answer

The argument relates correlation to causality. Just because a pattern (lowering of weight) was observed in most people doesn't necessarily imply that one event caused the other.All other options except E are straight OUT.
Let us test E at the 2 extremes.
If the answer to E is yes then it strengthens the conclusion else it weakens the conclusion.

Sent from my ONE E1003 using  GMAT Club Forum mobile app

ArjunJag1328 · Answer

A group of experimental subjects participated in an "intermittent fasting" study, under which they ate all of their food for the day within six hours of waking up. The subjects consumed the same number of calories as they normally did throughout an entire day and did not change their exercise patterns. Nearly all of the subjects lost a significant amount of weight during the study. It can thus be concluded that eating all of one's food within a relatively short period of time causes the body to burn more calories.

Which of the following would be most useful to establish in evaluating the argument?

A. Are people more likely to consume low-calorie foods early in the day than at night?
  Explanation: Irrelevant

B. Is the practice of intermittent fasting safe and free of major side effects?
  Explanation: The question is to evaluate whether eating all of one's food within a relatively short period of time causes the body to burn more calories. Hence whether intermittent fasting is safe and free from side effects is irrelevant - Incorrect.

C. Are most people able to consume as many calories within an interval of six hours as they normally would over the course of an entire day?
  Explanation: It is given in the passage that people consumed the same number of calories as they normally did throughout the entire day. Hence Incorrect

D. Will people following an intermittent fasting protocol feel substantially hungrier than those who space out their meals more regularly?
  Explanation: Irrerelevant

E. Does the body burn calories faster when food is eaten earlier in a person's waking hours than when it is eaten later?
  Explanation: This will help us to determine whether eating all of one's food within a relatively short period of time causes the body to burn more calories. - Correct

S1ny1s · Answer

Does it necessary to find the alternative reason to solve the evaluating the argument question type if the question type is causality? and stick to this option choice, which provides the alternative reason?

Then the question is What is the difference between the weakness question type and evaluating the argument question type?? I mean, it would be easier to solve the evaluating the argument question type if you have some ideas about how to resolve the weakness question type.

Can anyone shed light on this question? I would be thrilled

Raman109 · Answer

Understanding the argument -
A group of experimental subjects participated in an "intermittent fasting" study, under which they ate all of their food for the day within six hours of waking up. - Fact 
The subjects consumed the same number of calories as they normally did throughout an entire day and did not change their exercise patterns. - Fact 
Nearly all of the subjects lost a significant amount of weight during the study. - Fact 
It can thus be concluded that eating all of one's food within a relatively short period of time causes the body to burn more calories. - Conclusion. Eating one's food in a short period of time CAUSES the body to burn more calories. X causes Y. Whenever we have a correlation concerted to the causation. We need to check if Y did not cause X and Z did not cause X and Y.

Option Elimination -

A. Are people more likely to consume low-calorie foods early in the day than at night? - When people consume more calories, it is not related to the argument. We have limited the experiment to people eating within 6 hours of waking up. Moreover, we need to check the validity of the conclusion that Eating one's food in a short period of time CAUSES the body to burn more calories. X causes Y. Does it strengthen or weaken the causal relationship? No. Out of scope. 
 
B. Is the practice of intermittent fasting safe and free of major side effects? - safety is out of scope of this argument. Our scope here is to check the validity of the conclusion that Eating one's food in a short period of time CAUSES the body to burn more calories. X causes Y. Does it strengthen or weaken the causal relationship? No. Out of scope.

C. Are most people able to consume as many calories within an interval of six hours as they normally would over the course of an entire day? Whether they are able or not, they have done the same in the experiment as per the experiment. Our scope is to check the validity of the conclusion that Eating one's food in a short period of time CAUSES the body to burn more calories. X causes Y. Does it strengthen or weaken the causal relationship? No. Out of scope.

D. Will people following an intermittent fasting protocol feel substantially hungrier than those who space out their meals more regularly? - out of scope.

E. Does the body burn calories faster when food is eaten earlier in a person's waking hours than when it is eaten later? - ok. So it says Z, which is "body burns the calories faster when food is eaten earlier in the person's waking hours," is the cause of "body to burn more calories," and not "Eating one's food in a short period of time" as a cause.

ashKing12 · Answer

Eating all of food in short period (Cause) ---------------> (Effect) Burn more calories

This is a standard cause and effect, and the author assumes that nothing else apart from the above CAUSE can cause the above EFFECT.

E) YES, Eating Earlier (causes) --------> Burn more calories  
No, Eating Earlier DO NOT CAUSE---------> Burn more calories

A group of experimental subjects participated in an intermittent fast

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A group of experimental subjects participated in an intermittent fast

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