Health officials now recommend that people reduce their intake of food

Question

Health officials now recommend that people reduce their intake of foods that are high in cholesterol, such as red meat. The recent decline in the total consumption of beef indicates that many people are following this recommendation. But restaurants specializing in steak are flourishing despite an overall decline in the restaurant industry. So clearly there still are a lot of people completely ignoring the health recommendation.

The argument is vulnerable to criticism on which one of the following grounds?

(A) It neglects to consider whether restaurants that specialize in steak try to attract customers by offering steak dinners at low prices.

(B) It assumes without warrant that people who eat steak at steak restaurants do not need to reduce their intake of foods that are high in cholesterol.

(C) It presupposes that the popularity of restaurants that specialize in steaks is a result of a decrease in the price of beef.

(D) It mistakes the correlation of the decline in beef consumption and the decline in the restaurant industry for a causal relation.

(E) It fails to consider whether the people who patronize steak restaurants have heeded the health officials by reducing their cholesterol intake in their at-home diets.

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Official Answer

E

gmat1220 · Answer

The arg is confusing correlation with causation. Its D

Deckard22 · Answer

E-

The conclusion assumes that by restaurants specializing in steak flourishing, the patrons of these restaurants are not following the health recommendations.

Answer E would weaken the arguement as it provides an alternate way in which people who eat at these restaurants might be reducing their cholesterol

diebeatsthegmat · Answer

i think the answer is E

people are decreasing the intake of red meat because of wanting to take care of health. 
however there is a restaurant selling so many beef to its customers everyday. thus those customers do not care of their health at all.

the text just says that people are reducing eating meat but it doesnt say that people stopped eating meat

E says they just eat meat in restaurant but they dont eat meat at home. this means that those customers are really reducing the intake of meat and they do care of their health

vjsharma25 · Answer

Good work diebeatsthegmat and rros0770.

gmat1220 · Answer

So D is wrong since it's attacking the premise than the conclusion. Isn't it?? otherwise d is very strong contender. I mark the keywords "decline" and indicate. So the premise seems to be imply causality when it should be correlation.

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Posted from my mobile device

Deckard22 · Answer

Hi Gmat1220-

In my interpretation of the arguement, the author is not trying to link or correlate the decline in beef consumption to the decline in the restaurant industry. These are presented as two seperate events, with  essentially  a paradox between them (if beef consumption is down, why are steakhouses flourishing while the rest of the restaurant industry declines?).

I think the error with choice D is misinterpretting that the author has blamed the decline of the restaurant industry on declining beef consumption/health officials. The author does not attempt to correlate or present a causal relationship between these two events.

ctkrishnan · Answer

Answer choice E  weakens the argument's conclusion by giving a reasoning as to why the steak restaurants are flourishing and at the same time the people adhering to the reduction in meat consumption by not having meat at home. This effectively proves the reduction in meat intake.

Zatarra · Answer

I chose E
which is correct.
However i need some help understanding the implications of choice D.
Cant we interpret choice D as "The author expects a causal relationship between the recommendation of the HEalth officials and the decline in sales of meat by the restaurants if people are following the recommendation of the health officials."

tuanquang269 · Answer

Choice E exactly says that the patrons who go to steak restaurant whether have necessarily to reduce their meat assumption at home => weaken the conclusion which states that patrons at steak restaurant ignore health officials recommendations

siddharthmuzumdar · Answer

E is the best one here. It weakens the conclusion that there are a lot of people who ignore the health recommendation by stating that these people have steak in the restaurants but reduce the amount of meat in their diets at home. Thus, the total amount of meat eaten is less and they are thus, taking care of their health.

KeVinHUnTer · Answer

The conclusion assumes that by restaurants specializing in steak flourishing, the patrons of these restaurants are not following the health recommendations.Answer E would weaken the arguement as it provides an alternate way in which people who eat at these restaurants might be reducing their cholesterol..

ssriva2 · Answer

Is E.
It weakens the statement that ppl are not following health recommendations.

arnabs · Answer

i have a minor doubt here;

In questions that have options like such as these, that ask to find the criticism and which options are overlooked or not overlooked by the narrator, do we still stick to the conclusion?? i mean are we still to find an option that weakens the conclusion or just find an assumption??
because i narrowed down to B, D and E. I eliminated D on grounds that it does not cater to the conclusion and we are to find an option that criticizes the thought that "people are not conscious about their health." We are to find an option that says that "people are conscious about their health".
For eliminating B, I said this to myself;
how does it matter if the author assumes that the people reduce their cholestrol by consuming less cholestrol food. As long as they are not conscious about their health, the option doesnt hold good.
and lastly, E just about weakens the conclusion that people are conscious by substituting their intake.

experts help would be great!!!

nightblade354 · Answer

Bumping for further discussion

sayan640 · Answer

MartyMurray   KarishmaB  Can you please explain why option D is wrong ?

MartyMurray · Answer

The conclusion of the argument is the following:

clearly there still are a lot of people completely ignoring the health recommendation

The support for the conclusion is the following:

restaurants specializing in steak are flourishing despite an overall decline in the restaurant industry

We see that the reasoning of the argument is that, since restaurants specializing in steak are doing better than restaurants in general, people must be ignoring the recommendation to reduce intake of foods that are high in cholesterol, such as red meat.

Now, let's consider (D):

(D) It mistakes the correlation of the decline in beef consumption and the decline in the restaurant industry for a causal relation.

"A causal relation" another way of saying "a cause-effect relationship."

So, (D) means, the argument makes the mistake of deciding that the decline in beef consumption caused the overall decline in the restaurant industry.

Looking at the argument, we see that nowhere in it is the idea that people reducing their consumption of beef caused a decline in the overall restaurant industry.

In fact, on the contrary, the point of the argument is that many people did not reduce their consumption of beef and that their continuing to consume beef is the reason why restaurants specializing in steak are flourishing.

Simply put, the argument suggests that continued beef consumption is causing some restaurants to do well, not that a decline in beef consumption caused a decline in the restaurant industry.

So, what (D) describes is basically the opposite of what the argument does.

sayan640 · Answer

Thank you for responding  MartyMurray  
I chose D because of this line i.e  The recent decline in the total consumption of beef indicates that many people are following this recommendation.
"Indicates that " does not mean causality , right ? 
Cant we infer that the  the recent decline in the total consumption of beef happened  because  many people are following this recommendation i.e 
there is    the decline in beef consumption ? 
kindly help.

MartyMurray · Answer

Right.
 
Yes, those statements indicate that there has been a decline in beef consumption that has occurred as a result of the recommendation.

At the same time, the fact that the recommendation caused a decline in beef consumption does not involve a cause-effect relationship between a decline in beef consumption and a decline in the restaurant industry.

The only cause-effect relationship involving beef consumption and the restaurant industry involved in the argument is that continued beef consumption has resulted in restaurants specializing in steak "flourishing."

So, yes, the argument does indicate that beef consumption has declined, but in the context of discussing the relationship between beef consumption and the restaurant industry, the argument indicates that the cause is "a lot of people" continuing to consume of beef, and the effect is steak restaurants "flourishing."

Health officials now recommend that people reduce their intake of food

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GMAT Critical Reasoning (CR) Questions

Health officials now recommend that people reduce their intake of food

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