A premium black tea brand advertises its tea as healthy tea since its

Question

A premium black tea brand advertises its tea as healthy tea since its brand contains ginger, basil leaves, and ginseng. It is ironic that the company overlooks the fact that it contains caffeine, too. If you mix caffeine with a glass of milk, milk will not be healthy anymore.

Which one of the following most accurately describes the method of reasoning used in the argument?

(A) Citing a claim to prove a point
 (B) Citing an example to establish a theory
 (C) Citing a claim to disprove a theory
 (D) Leveraging on the veracity of a cited fact to challenge a claim
 (E) Leveraging on an arguable claim to challenge a claim

Monishka · Answer

'If you mix caffeine with a glass of milk, milk will not be healthy anymore.' This is not a claim, as per the passage. It is a fact. Also, we are not proving the above-mentioned fact. We are using the accuracy of this fact to challenge the claim that the premium black tea brand makes. We are not trying to make a point, we are just challenging it based on the accuracy of a fact.

anvigargg

why not A

SHM95 · Answer

Why not E.

IMO D and E mean the same.

GordonZeng · Answer

This is not a good question to use for practice. Many questions on this board will be third-party / unofficial, which isn't too bad for Quant, but it's terrible for Verbal (where matching the GMAT testmakers in terms of standards of wording, nuance, and structure is critical).

The actual GMAT will not talk about challenging a fact (the right answer will not involve attacking Premises) unless the argument is about disproving something. Structurally, the argument in the question is okay. However, the wordings for the last sentence and for (D) and (E) are non-standard and thus vague/confusing.

(D) should be reworded to take out "veracity", since it's already identified the last sentence as a "cited fact". It doesn't make sense to use the truth of a fact, since the definition of a fact (as normally presented on the exam) is that it's already known to be true.

Overall, not worth overthinking this one.

Chadwik · Answer

The argument:

Accepts the fact that the tea has some healthy ingredients.

Then introduces another verifiable fact: caffeine reduces healthfulness.

Uses that to challenge the claim that the tea is healthy.

It is not building a theory or using a subjective or arguable claim — it's using a stated, factual property (caffeine makes milk unhealthy) to question another health claim.

(A) Citing a claim to prove a point
→ The argument isn’t proving a new point — it’s challenging an existing one.

(B) Citing an example to establish a theory
→ It gives an example (milk + caffeine) but doesn’t try to build a new theory. It uses it to attack the brand’s claim.

(C) Citing a claim to disprove a theory
→ No actual theory is being disproven — it’s a marketing claim (the tea is healthy), not a theory.

(D) Leveraging on the veracity of a cited fact to challenge a claim
✅ Correct.
This precisely fits:

The verifiable fact: caffeine makes milk unhealthy.

Is used to challenge the tea brand’s “healthy” claim.

(E) Leveraging on an arguable claim to challenge a claim
→ The argument does not rely on an arguable claim. It uses a strong example assumed to be true and verifiable.

A premium black tea brand advertises its tea as healthy tea since its

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GMAT Critical Reasoning (CR) Questions

A premium black tea brand advertises its tea as healthy tea since its

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