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

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.”


My response:

The argument’s claim that red meat and fatty cheese intake is not as much of a concern to the population as it used to be is not readily supported by the offered justifications and examples. The argument ignores relevant causations or implications that might explain the examples without justifying the conclusion. One can observe clear unstated and unfounded assumptions that the argument relies on. To properly assess the given examples’ implications one must investigate several factors and possible implications that the argument omits or neglects.

Firstly, the presence of high-fat cheeses in a traditionally organic store does not necessarily allow the conclusion of shifting concerns within the population. Most obviously, the argument offers no information, whether such cheeses were also sold in the store's beginnings or, whether their sale is a recent introduction. If the former case were true, one must inquire further information about, for example, the sales performance of cheeses compared to the sales performance of organic fruit and vegetables to allow conclusions shifting concerns in the population. However, even if cheese sales grew significantly at the cost of vegetable and fruit sales, other causes might offer explanations. A shifting customer base, other sources of fruit procurement, such as the internet or supermarkets, might distort the sales ratio. Thus, the conclusion of shifting concerns might still be unfounded until a holistic and wider investigation into cheese and meat sales compared to fruit and vegetable sales is concluded. However, if cheeses are a new addition to the store’s offering, one could still not blindly argue that this proves shifting concerns. The store might have included cheeses to boost fruit sales and attract new customers. High-fat cheeses are often consumed jointly with fruits, such as figs, pears, grapes, or plums. The store’s customers might have been buying cheeses elsewhere and to realize this lost revenue, the store might have decided to sell cheeses themselves. Customers could have decided to shop at supermarkets or competitors, where they could buy cheeses and fruit at once. Thus, simple business implications could justify the new addition of cheeses into the store’s lineup. Concludingly, the presence of cheeses in a traditional organic store is not sufficient for the argument’s conclusion.

Regarding the argument second example, the contrasting performance of the vegetarian café and the House of Beef, one will inevitably recognize severe flaws as well. For instance, the argument offers no insight into the business model of the House of Beef. House of Beef could be a delicatessen store for exclusive meats, thus commanding high margins and prices. Compared to the gastronomic business of a café, which traditionally has high competition, low margins, and difficult economics, it might be reasonable to assume that the House of Beef has significantly higher margins simply based on its business model as exclusive, high priced store. Alternatively, if one assumes that House of Beef is also a gastronomic business, one should also inquire further information. A high-class steak house might again command higher prices than a simple café. The café might very well significantly exceed House of Beef in absolute sales and revenue, but could severely lack in absolute profit due to lower margins. This would lead one to the adverse conclusion that the population still regulates its meat intake as a vegetarian café has higher sales than a steak house or meat-focused restaurant. The population might see meat as exclusive and, thus, might simply be willing to pay premiums for an exclusive dish of meat, which the population does not eat regularly. However, this conclusion would also be far fetched and is not justified by the article’s claims about House of Beef and the vegetarian café. To properly conclude upon the population’s regulation of meat intake based on the performance of a meat serving restaurant and a vegetarian café, one must investigate deeper into sales performance, willingness to pay, frequency of visits, customer reach, and many other relevant factors. Thus, the argument’s passage on the performance of House of Beef and the vegetarian café does not offer a sufficient basis for a relevant conclusion of the population’s regulation of meat intake.

In the end, one cannot and should not accept the argument’s conclusion as true or even remotely true. The argument neglects too much information about the three businesses and ignores possible justifications for its observed issues. In order to conclude about the population’s shifting regulation of meat and high-fat cheese intake one must inquire further into these businesses, consumer trends, and factors that might affect the sales performance of meat and cheeses compared to fruit and vegetables. Even after such investigations, one can deduct intake regulation from sales performance. A holistic investigation must abandon the arguments approach of observing sales and go into the consumers’ consumption and balance of diet.