By making their menu items healthy to eat, many restaurants

By making their menu items healthy to eat, many restaurants have done much to help their patrons be healthier. However, these restaurants can do even more to improve the health of their patrons by ceasing to automatically provide unhealthy food items that are commonly complimentary, such as butter or artificial sweeteners, and providing them only if patrons request them.

The passage presents a plan.

Often, in Plan questions, the conclusion is not directly stated. At the same time, what we can do is presume that the unstated conclusion is that the plan will achieve its goal.

In this case, the goal of the plan is the following:

do even more to improve the health of their patrons

The way the goal is to be accomplished is the following:

by ceasing to automatically provide unhealthy food items that are commonly complimentary, such as butter or artificial sweeteners, and providing them only if patrons request them

We see that the reasoning involved in the plan is basically that ceasing to automatically provide unhealthy items will result in patrons being healthier.

Considering that plan, we can see that there's a pretty big gap between the way the plan works and the goal. In other words, for ceasing to automatically provide unhealthy items to lead to patrons being healthier requires that other things go right as well. So, the proposal assumes that all those other things will occur as well and that no malicious variable will cause the plan not to work.

The above proposal presumes which of the following?

This is a Plan Assumption question, and the correct answer will state something that must be true for it to make sense to conclude that the plan will achieve its goal.

(A) Restaurant patrons not offered complimentary unhealthy food items would not as a result eat more of other items.

To eliminate this choice, we need to notice the following.

The problem that the plan is meant to address is not eating in general. It's eating "unhealthy food items."

So, since "these restaurants" mentioned in the passage have already made "their menu items" healthy to eat, causing patrons to "eat more of other items" would result in the goal of the plan being achieved. After all, if patrons eat other items that are healthy menu items rather than unhealthy complimentary items, then presumably they will be healthier.

So, the plan works even if this choice is not true.

Eliminate.

(B) Restaurant patrons not automatically provided with common unhealthy complimentary items would know to request those items if they wanted them.

This does not have to be true for the plan to achieve its goal.

After all, even if patrons not automatically provided with common unhealthy complimentary items would NOT know to request those items, the patrons could still become healthier through not consuming those items.

Eliminate.

(C) It is a restaurant’s responsibility to do as much as possible to help its patrons be healthy.

This choice supports the wrong conclusion.

The unstated conclusion is that, by following the plan, restaurants CAN achieve the goal of helping patrons be healthy.

This choice supports the conclusion that restaurants SHOULD help patrons be healthy.

So, this choice is not an assumption on which the reasoning depends since, regardless of whether it is a restaurant’s responsibility to do as much as possible to help its patrons be healthy, the plan could still work.

Eliminate.

(D) Restaurants’ failing to automatically provide unhealthy complimentary items would not cause patrons to go to other restaurants with less healthy menu items.

This choice is interesting.

After all, if restaurants’ failing to automatically provide unhealthy complimentary items WOULD cause patrons to go to other restaurants with less healthy menu items, then the plan probably will not work.

After all, in that case, these restaurants with healthy menu items would, by ceasing to automatically provide unhealthy complimentary items, cause their patrons to go to other restaurants with less healthy menu items and thus defeat the purpose of the plan. In that case, the restaurants would cause their patrons to be less healthy, rather than healthier.

So, for the plan to achieve the goal, this choice must be true.

Keep.

(E) There are no restaurant patrons who would not eat unhealthy complimentary food items even if they were automatically provided by a restaurant.

This choice doesn't have to be true for the argument to work.

After all, even if SOME patrons would not eat unhealthy complimentary food items even if they were automatically provided, as long as some others would eat such items if they were automatically provided, restaurants do more to help their patrons in general be healthier by ceasing to automatically provide such items.

Eliminate.

Correct answer: D