Please rate my essay - I have my GMAT on August 17
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14 Aug 2017, 19:38
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 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 Cafe, an old vegetarian restaurant, are still making a modest living, but the owners of the new House of Beef across the street are millionaires.
The aforementioned argument claims that people are not as concerned as they were a decade ago about regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses. The argument, further gives few evidences to prove its point, evidences that appears to be weak as they extrapolate and assumes to reach to the conclusion. The following paragraphs will lay down the flaws and what could have been done to present a clearer picture of the current situation of intake of red meat and fatty cheeses.
First, the argument uses an example of a store that started selling organic fruits, vegetables and whole grain flours in 1960s and is now also selling wide selection of cheeses made with high butterfat content. One cannot deny that the evidence does appear to indicate increase in popularity of cheeses, however, the evidence does not present any clear evidence of a higher sale of cheeses in comparison to healthy food. The evidence does not present any data around sale of cheeses which could have given a clearer picture and would have helped to draw a conclusion. Hence, merely putting cheeses on sale does not amount to the fact that people are not regulating their cheeses intake. It would have been better if the argument presented a data around sales of the items in the store which would have cemented the doubts around the conclusion it attempts to draw.
Second, the argument tries to correlate the modest earnings of a vegetarian restaurant with the fact that vegetarian food is being consumes less in comparison to meat. This conclusion take too much of a leap of faith and assumes a lot without clear evidence. The vegetarian restaurant might not be doing well because of a poor menu. The restaurant might not be doing well because the owner might not have been doing a good marketing of his restaurant. Hence, to directly correlate the earnings of a vegetarian restaurant to meat consumption is far fetched and high on extrapolation without data points. The argument would have done better to present clearer evidences around restaurant not doing well because of lesser preference to vegetarian food.
Third, the argument appears to assume that the owners of the house of beef have turned millionaire because of higher sale of beef. But the argument does not provide any evidence of the same. There is not data which would have pointed towards the correlation. What about a scenario where the owners might have become millionaire because of their other businesses doing well, the businesses which have nothing to do with food. What about a scenario where the owners have just inherited the money in the recent past.
The argument seems to have not answered multiple questions which would have helped to develop a correlation to the food intake habit of people. Why did not the argument present any data around sale of food in the organic food store? Why didn’t the argument present more data around the modest earnings of the vegetarian food restaurant owner? And why didn’t the argument present data around higher earnings of beef restaurant?
Considering above flaws and the questions raised, the argument appears to be flawed. The argument assumes and extrapolates on weak linkages which seems far fetched. Therefore, in absence of evidences and data the argument is more of a wishful thinking than a substantive argument and is thus open to debate.