In general, people are not as concerned as they were a decade ago abou

Hi guys, can you evaluate my AWA? (I swear this is the last one, tomorrow I have the exam)

Thank you in advance!!

The following appeared in a magazine article on trends and lifestyles.

"In general, people are not as concerned as they were a decade ago about regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses. Walk into the Heart's Delight, a store that started selling organic fruits and vegetables and whole-grain flours in the 1960's, and you will also find a wide selection of cheeses made with high butterfat content. Next door, the owners of the Good Earth Café, an old vegetarian restaurant, are still making a modest living, but the owners of the new House of Beef across the street are millionaires."

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.

The argument states that people are not as concerned as they were a decade ago about regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses. Stated in this way, the argument manipulates facts and provides a distorted representation of the situation. Furthermore, the conclusion relies on assumptions for which there is no clear evidence to support them. Hence, the argument is weak and has several flaws.

First, the argument readily claims that it is possible to understand how people changed the level of attention to their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses by comparing what type of food was offered in restaurants in the 1960s with what has been offered now. This statement is clearly a stretch, as there is no evidence that this correlation exists. For instance, the argument does not state whether the wide selection of cheeses with high butterfat offered by Heart's Delight was also available in the 1960s. Furthermore, the argument assumes that restaurants similar to the new House of Beef were not popular in the 1960s, without any explicit evidence. The argument would have been much clearer if it explicitly stated that fatty cheeses and red meat have only recently become popular.

Second, the argument states that the amount of income generated by a restaurant is a good measure of the attractiveness of the food it offers. Clearly, there is no evidence that supports the existence of a correlation between these two elements. Indeed, owners of the new House of Beef could be millionaires for reasons that are not directly related to the success of their restaurant, and the same reasoning applies to the owners of the Good Earth Café. For instance, if we assume equal demand, the products offered by the House of Beef could have higher prices than those offered by the Good Earth Café. It would have been better to explicitly state that demand for red meat has largely increased since the 1960s, whereas demand for vegetarian food has experienced a large decline.

Finally, the argument fails to address several questions. Is the increased demand for red meat and fatty cheeses caused by other factors, such as a shift in food preferences rather than a change in people's concern for their health? Are the Good Earth Café and the House of Beef really comparable, in the sense that they offer the exact same products? Has Heart's Delight changed the products it offers since the 1960s? Without convincing answers to these questions, one could argue that the argument looks more wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.

In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above-mentioned reasons and therefore is unconvincing. It could be reasonably strengthened if it explicitly stated that demand for red meat and fatty cheeses has increased whereas demand for healthy products has decreased, or that differences in income of the owners of the Good Earth Café and the House of Beef are explained by the different success of their restaurants. The argument omits many important facts that are crucial to have a better understanding of the situation, therefore it is not possible to draw a conclusion based on the evidence provided by this statement. Without all this information, the argument remains open to debate and unsubstantiated.