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

Hi! Can someone please evaluate my essay? Thanks!

The argument concludes that the the people are not as concerned about regulating the intake of red meat and fatty cheeses as they were a decade ago based on the selection of food items available at stores, and restaurants and their earnings. The argument considers three establishments. Heart's Delight, and old store that started by selling organic fruits and vegetables and whole grain flours has also entered the market of high butterfat cheeses. Good Earth Cafe, an old vegetarian restaurant making a modest living. And the House of Beef, earning in millions. The argument is flawed for two reasons.

The argument suggests that Heart's Delight entered the cheese market because the demand for fatty cheeses increased. Throught this the argument concluded that the people, in general, are not as concerned about their intake of fatty cheeses. However, other reasons could also lead to the increase in demand of the fatty cheeses, for example, population might have increased over the decade and hence the demand for fatty cheeses also increased. The argument should have provided evidence regarding the sales distribution of the fatty cheeses compared to organic fruits and vegetables.

Second, the argument does not consider the number of vegetarians compared to the number of non-vegetarians in the population. If the latter out-numbers the former by a huge margin, the the House of Beef is bound to earn a lot more than Good Earth Cafe, regardless of the people's concern about regulating their intake of red meat.

The article needs to consider evidence regarding the sales distribution of products in Heart's Delight and the population distribution of vegetarians to non-vegetarians to make the argument convincing.

Hi samyakj1412

Welcome to GMAT Club!

Where is the prompt your essay is based on?

I am assuming your essay is based on the following prompt

“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 ofthe new House of Beef across the street are millionaires.”

If my assumption is correct then following is your score.


PS: Always post the prompt with the essay.

Good Luck

Thanks a lot! Sajjad1994

Hi, please rate my essay!

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 ofthe new House of Beef across the street are millionaires.”

The argument states that as compared to a decade ago, people today are not as concerned about regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses. The argument is based on the premise that Heart's Delight, a store that was started in the 1960s with the aim of selling organic fruits and vegetables and whole-grain flours, also sells a wide selection of cheeses made with high butterfat content. The argument also makes a comparison between two restaurants, one selling vegetarian food and the other beef, and talks about how the owners of the restaurant selling beef are millionaires today, while the owners of the vegetarian restaurant are merely making a modest living. Stated in this way, the argument fails to mention several key factors on the basis of which it could be evaluated. It also modifies facts and presents a distorted view of the situation. Therefore, the argument is unconvincing and falls apart at the seams.

First, the author readily assumes that because Heart's Delight, a restaurant started in the 1960s to sell organic fruits and vegetables and whole-grain flours, has a wide selection of cheeses, people have therefore become unconcerned about their intake of fatty cheeses. The author makes an illogical correlation between the wide range of cheeses being sold to the nonchalance of people and their health. The author fails to provide any evidence regarding the number of cheeses that are on display as compared to the number of cheeses sold. There is also no information provided about whether such cheeses were being sold a decade earlier as well. We are told that this restaurant was opened in the 1960s and the author compares people's eating habits today to that of a decade ago. What about all the years in between the 1960s and today? The author seems to have conveniently missed making any such mention or comparison.

Second, the argument claims that people are not as concerned today as they were a decade ago about regulating their intake of red meat. This claim is based on the premise that because the owners of the new House of Beef restaurant are millionaires, people have increased their intake of red meat. This is again a very weak and unsupported claim as the argument does not provide any correlation between the restaurant's revenue and the increase of meat by people. What if the food is just better and the menu vaster than it is as the vegetarian restaurant next door? Or maybe the food at the vegetarian restaurant is just pathetic? Without any information provided comparing the two, or any statistics on the intake of red meat by the people over the years at House of Beef, this argument is highly weakened.

Finally, what is unclear is that the argument makes a generalized conclusion and states that "in general, people are not as concerned" when it really only makes a mention about two local restaurants and one store. How can the author make such a generalized statement, taking into account such little evidence and statistics? Had the author looked at over 100 restaurants in 30-40 different states or countries, and provided statistics and information on the same, this argument could have been a lot more convincing.

In summary, the argument is unconvincing due to the faulty assumptions, aforementioned. If the argument had drawn upon the examples and points as suggested and thereby plugged in the holes in the reasoning, it would have been far sounder on the whole.

Good Luck

The argument claims that people have started living an unhealthy lifestyle by ignoring their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses. The conclusion of this argument is based on the premises that, a store that used to sell organic fruits and vegetables and whole-grain flours in the 1960’s has now also started selling a wide selection of cheeses made with high butterfat content. Moreover, Good Earth Café, an old vegetarian restaurant, are not earning as much the owners of the House of Beef across the street earn. The conclusion of the argument relies on several assumptions for which there is no clear evidence. Hence, the argument is unconvincing and has several flaws.

First, the author readily assumes that by selling a selection of cheeses, a store is promoting unhealthy lifestyle. The author is overlooking the fact that just like fruits, vegetables and whole-grain flours, cheese is also highly nutritional if consumed in the appropriate amount. The author also fails to mention which products from the store are sold more which can help in evaluating if people are actually moving towards an unfit lifestyle or consuming highly nutritional products.

Second, there is no clear evidence that Good Earth Café earns less due to the sale of vegetarian items. It is possible that the food at the café is not of good quality. Another possibility why the café might not be working as well could be, because it is an old café, people have consumed as much as they could from it. The House of Beef, being a new café probably attracts more customers by advertising in a nice and modern way and by targeting the curiosity of people.

Finally, the author overlooks a major key factor which can help in evaluating the conclusion- House of Beef being a millionaire does not necessarily mean that they earned all of that from a new business. There is a high chance of them being previously wealthy which actually helped them to start their business and market it in such way that people are attracted to it.
Based on the evidences, we cannot conclude that people are neglecting their lifestyle by shifting to unhealthy food like red meat and fatty cheeses. Without having all this information, the argument is unsubstantiated and remains open to debate.

Someone please review mine too...?

I'm a bit confused on how to tackle this prompt.

“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.”

Am I supposed to argue why the conclusion that "people are not as concerned as they were a decade ago about regulating their meat and cheese intake" is wrong, or am I supposed to attack the anecdotal evidence?

My essay:

In the article, the author argues that people are not as concerned as they were a decade ago about regulation their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses. The author uses the evidence of an organic fruits and vegetables stores starting to now sell high butterfat cheeses, and an example of a beef restaurant making more money than a vegetarian restaurant. Despite this evidence, the author's argument is flawed because the author fails to take into account factors that might affect people's dietary habits such as cost, speed of service, and the fact that moderating meat and cheese does not mean a person can never eat those things.

First, the author fails to take into account that people might still want to regulate their intake of meat and cheese, but cannot afford to do so because they are cheaper than organic, vegetarian items. If you go to a fastfood restaurant such as Wendy's, the salad is usually twice as expensive as the hamburger. If a hamburger is $6 and a salad is $12, then a person could save $30 on a working week just by ordering hamburgers instead of salads. For a country where half its workers do not have anything in their bank accounts, the extra $30 is huge. Even though these people might want to regular their meat and cheese intake, they cannot afford to do so with the little money they have. Thus, the author fails to account for people putting saving money over eating healthy.

Secondly, the author assumes that people don't want to regulate their meat and fatty cheeses because the House of Beef makes more money than the vegetarian restaurant. However, author fails to account for another reason why this might be happening: the House of Beef might have faster service than the vegetarian restaurant. For many workers, they only have a 30 minute lunch break. If the House of Beef is a fast food joint, those workers would rather order from there than have to sit down at a vegetarian restaurant and wait for service. This might take over an hour, and at that point, the lunch break has ended half an hour ago and the worker is now fired. The customers might want to regulate their meat and cheese intake, but due to time constraints, they aren't able to.

Finally, the author uses evidence that the organic vegetable store started selling cheeses to implicate that people are not as concerned as they were about regulating their meat and cheese intake. However, just because people want to eat some meat and cheese in moderation does not mean that they don't care about regulating their intake. Meat and cheese taste good, and some people just want to cheat on their diet for one day. Additionally, adding cheese to a meal of vegetables can help kids become more willing to eat them instead of meat and other junk foods. Therefore, the author's argument that people are not concerned about regulating their meat and cheese intake are flawed.

In conclusion, the author's argument that people are not concerned as they were a decade ago about regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses is flawed. This is because the author fails to take into account that people can still be concerned, but other factors such as cost, speed of service, and the fact that moderating meat and cheese does not mean a person can never eat those things triumph these concerns. If the author wants to strengthen his argument, then he should survey people to see why they still eat fatty cheeses and meat and if they still care about regulating their intake.

Good Luck

Please rate this too. Thanks!

The argument claims that people are not as concerned as they were a decade ago about regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses since few places have started selling these foods and owners who serve these foods are millionaires compared to owners who don’t serve these. The conclusion of the argument relies on assumptions for which there is no clear evidence. Hence, the argument is unconvincing and has several flaws.

The argument assumes that the observation about a few of the places is representative of the whole population and people are in general not as concerned about regulating their red meat and cheese intake as they were a decade ago. It is a stretch as the argument fails to consider other possibilities which might lead to this behavior. For eg, there could be several places where these kinds of food are not eaten by people and the crowd at these places could be of youngsters passing their leisure time and not of the public as a whole. The argument could have been much clearer if it provided data regarding various places and the kind of food eaten by people at several other geographical locations.

The argument concludes by merely looking at the condition of Heart’s Delight, Good Café Earth, and House of Beef. The argument fails to consider that owners of the House of Beef could be millionaires due to some other reason. The owners might have a good business sense which would be giving them an edge over the owners at Good Earth restaurant. It might have changed itself with changing needs but owners at Good Earth might still be using traditional ways and hence failing to draw customers. The owners of the House of Beef might be making money through some different source of income. If the argument had provided evidence that selling those kinds of food made House of Beef millionaires then it would have been much more convincing.

Finally, the argument fails to mention the data regarding the customers eating behavior at several places and the reasons behind the conditions of the places mentioned. Without this data one is left with the impression that the claim is more of wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.
The argument is flawed for the above-mentioned reasons and is therefore unconvincing. It could be considerably strengthened if the author mentioned all the relevant facts. Without this information, the argument remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.

Good Luck

Could someone rate my response:

The author argues that people are generally less concerned about regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses today than they were a decade ago. The support provided include claims that health food stores still carry fatty cheeses and are not as successful as the owners of the beef restaurant. Although the other scratches the surface of supporting their argument, there are a few holes in the reasoning. The author could also include additional evidence to strengthen their claim.

First, the author explains that a heath food store carries organic fruits and vegetables as well as high butterfat content. This introduces a false cause and effect thought pattern based on the information presented. The author is hinting that the owners of Heart's Delight is carrying fatty cheeses alongside their healthier options becayse people are not as concerned about regulating thier intake as they were a decade ago. The truth is we are not given any information as to why Heart's delight carries red meat and fatty cheeses. Perhaps the owners never intended to fully focus on strictly organic fruits and vegetables. Perhaps Heart's Delight is about eating food that comes directly from farm to table. In that case, the reasoning they have chosen to sell cheese is because the product market fit is in line with the purpose of the restaurant. Also, the author does not provide any evidence that indicates the cheese products are more or less successful than the veggies and fruits, which makes it difficult to measure its relevance to the argument.

Second, there could be many reasons as to why the Good Earth Cafe is making a modest living, especially in comparison to the new House of Beef restaurant across the street. One point specifically that is mentioned, is that the Good Earth Cafe is old and the House of Beef restaurant is new. Perhaps House of Beef has an online storefront where their products are shipped to grocers in various locations. An older restaurant, like Good Earth Cafe, may not have the ecommerce component, which could be contributing to its lack of success. This example demonstrates that a difference in profits may be due to ability to sell online where products are more accessible rather than a consumer's preference towards red meat and fatty cheeses vs healthier options.

Lastly, another reason that is not considered here is the costs involved. Perhaps the Beef restaurant has lower operating costs whereas the healthier restaurants have higher operating costs. This in turn could result in higher costs to the consumer, as most health foods do come at a cost. Therefore, without the cost and price information, it is impossible to know that the price may be what is causing less success for the health restaurants as compared to the beef restaurant.

There are a few different pieces of evidence that could strenghten the author's argument. Since the author's claim is related to a specific time frame, within the last decade, it would be helpful to compare the sales of a single restaurant today vs the sales a decade ago. That give more information with less variables about the performance of the Good Health vegetarian restaurant over time. On the other hand, the author could also provide more information to qualify that all restaurants have similar go to market channels and prices to take out those as concerns as to why one restaurant may be more successful over the next. Another data point the author could provide would be actual surveys given to consumers about their preferences for food choices today vs a decade ago.

In conclusion, the author's argument tht people are not as concerned as they were a decade ago about regulating thier intake of red meat and fatty cheeses is flawed in a number of areas. There is a lack of data that determines exactly why restaurants that sell these products are more successful than others. With additonal data points and less assumptions, the author would be in a better position to support their argument.

Good Luck

Hi! I Just started AWA prep. Please evaluate my essay and let me know your valuable inputs. Thanks in advance.

Prompt:
“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 essay:

The above argument states that the people aren't as concerned as they were a decade ago about regulating the cheese and red meat intake by providing few examples such as how the Heart's delight once an organic store , now sells cheese with high butterfat content and how the owners of the new house of Beef are millionaires. This argument is substantially flawed. The argument presents inconclusive information, offering dubious support, and from this draws unreasonably far-fetching conclusions.

The evidence cited involves ambiguous language. For example, the argument asserts that the people are not as concerned as they were decades ago about regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheese. Of course, people are concern about their intake universally but to what extent the past and the present opinion has changed is not clearly cited in the argument. They might have been liberal about their opinion to a certain extent decades ago but now they are even more liberal. That might have been the case. Simply by stating that the vegetarian restaurant are still making a modest living and stating the owners of the new house of Beef are millionaires , the author has failed to indicate whether the improvement is significant enough to merit or demerit any serious allegation stated in the argument.

Having provided with such questionable evidence , the people are not concerned. The facts of the past needn't hold true to the present day scenario as the recent technological advancement and studies might have proved that the red meat and fatty cheese are rich in proteins and consists of healthy fats that are essential for the humans, which might have made the people of the percent time to include meet and fatty cheese to be part of their diet. Even interpreting the questionable evidence in its most pessimistic light, we can expect that this one allegation will explode with serious consequences.

Supporting the above stated fact with questionable examples such as the organic store which once sold organic fruits and vegetables but now consists of wide selection of cheeses , vegetarian restaurant making a modest living and also the new house of beef becoming millionaires makes this conclusion far too flawed as there could be several reasons for the outcome mentioned in the examples. The store which once sold organic fruits and vegetables , now selling variety of cheeses made with high butter content could be supported by the above reason that the cheeses can be organic and consists of butterfat that are essential and good for health. The consumers might use cheese in a quantified amount as suggested, so that their diet is enriched with right amount of proteins from vegies, fruits and cheese. Similarly, the reason for the new house of Beef becoming millionaires could be not only because of the red meat consumption but also because of high demand across the countries for several purpose such as preparation of cattle feed or any other pet food etc. The claim that these meat stall owners became millionaires only by the meet consumption by the humans are overstated.

This argument is neither sound nor persuasive. The author has failed to convey any compelling reasons for us to conclude whether if the people are really not conscious about their intake or if there is a significant increase in their cheese and meat intake by providing us with examples which have gap.

Good Luck

Dear Sajjad1994 and other experts, I have my GMAT exam tomorrow. Kindly evaluate my AWA response and share your valuable feedback.

Thanks in advance.

My Response

The 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 conclusion of the argument is based on the premise that Heart’s Delight store, started selling cheeses made with high butterfat content and other examples which are not substantiated. The conclusion of the argument is based on assumptions, for which there is no clear evidence. Hence the argument is weak, unconvincing, and has several flaws.

First, the argument readily assumes that the people are not as concerned as they were a decade ago about the intake of red meat and fatty cheeses. This statement is a stretch and not substantiated in any way. The evidence cited uses ambiguous language. People might be concerned about their intake but to what extent in the past and the present is not cited in the argument. For example, they might have been liberal about their opinion to a certain extent decade ago but now they are even more liberal. The author fails to mention the correlation between the people’s concern and examples stated such as the vegetarian restaurant is still making a modest living and stating the owners of the new house of Beef are millionaires to substantiate the argument.

Second, the argument could have been much clearer if it provided the reasons behind people consuming or incorporating fatty cheese and red meat in their diet. Providing such questionable evidence that people are not as concerned as they were is a mere invalidated opinion. The facts of the past needn't hold to the present-day scenario as the recent technological advancement and studies might have proved that red meat and fatty cheese are rich in protein and consists of healthy fats that are essential for humans, which might have made the people of the present time include meat and fatty cheese to be part of their diet. Even interpreting the questionable evidence in its most pessimistic light, we can expect that this one allegation will explode with serious consequences.

Finally, the argument fails to mention one of the key factors based on which the argument could be evaluated. The reason for the adaption and growth mentioned in the argument is unsubstantiated. The Heart’s Delight store which once sold only organic fruits and vegetables now sells a variety of cheeses made with high butter content could be supported by the above reason that the cheeses can be organic and consists of butterfat that is essential and good for health. The consumers might use cheese in a quantified amount as suggested so that their diet is enriched with the right amount of proteins from veggies, fruits, and cheese. Similarly, the reason for the new house of Beef becoming millionaires could be not only because of the red meat consumption but also because of high demand across the countries for several purposes such as preparation of cattle feed or any other pet food, etc. The claim that these meat stall owners became millionaires only by the meet consumption by the humans is overstated. Without all the information, one is left with an impression that the argument is more of wishful thinking rather than a substantiated argument.

In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above-mentioned reasons and therefore is unconvincing. The argument could be considerably strengthened if the author provided the relevant factors. To evaluate or access a certain situation or argument, one has to have all the relevant information and knowledge. Without the information, the argument remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.

Good Luck

Here is the sample essay for you MiruChan