ganand wrote:
Any food that is not sterilized and sealed can contain disease-causing bacteria. Once sterilized and properly sealed, however, it contains no bacteria. There are many different acceptable food-preservation techniques; each involves either sterilizing and sealing food or else at least slowing the growth of disease-causing bacteria. Some of the techniques may also destroy natural food enzymes that cause food to spoil or discolor quickly.
If the statements above are true, which one of the following must be true?
(A) All food preserved by an acceptable method is free of disease-causing bacteria.
(B) Preservation methods that destroy enzymes that cause food to spoil do not sterilize the food.
(C) Food preserved by a sterilization method is less likely to discolor quickly than food preserved with other methods.
(D) Any nonsterilized food preserved by an acceptable method can contain disease-causing bacteria.
(E) If a food contains no bacteria, then it has been preserved by an acceptable method.
Source: LSAT
This is how I arrived at the answer (D)
(A) All food preserved by an acceptable method is free of disease-causing bacteria.
This cannot be true because (from passage we understand)- while some of the acceptable methods may destroy bacteria completely through sterilizing and sealing food , other methods may slow the growth of bacteria indicating that it is not completely getting rid of bacteria. (B) Preservation methods that destroy enzymes that cause food to spoil do not sterilize the food.
This may or may not be true since we do not have any specific information regarding this in the passage(C) Food preserved by a sterilization method is less likely to discolor quickly than food preserved with other methods.
Similarly, this may or may not be true since we do not have any info on comparison between preservation techniques in the given passage (D) Any nonsterilized food preserved by an acceptable method can contain disease-causing bacteria.
This is VALID - from the passage , this answer looks solid because non-sterilized food preserved by one of the acceptable methods may have the possibility to contain bacteria(E) If a food contains no bacteria, then it has been preserved by an acceptable method.
As highlighted in statement (A), some acceptable methods may slow the growth of bacteria indicating that it is not completely getting rid of bacteria. Hence it does not hold true