Two new studies indicate that many people become obese more due to the

Hello jim441,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, Option B fails to maintain parallelism because we cannot utilize "their bodies" as the subject for phrase "eating too much"; it does not make sense to say that "their bodies were eating too much"; to maintain parallelism, we would need a subject along the lines of "them" or "the people".

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

How about this:

Two new studies indicate that many people become obese more due

1st sentence: to their bodies burning calories too slowly

2nd sentence: to eating too much

Posted from my mobile device

Option A:


Two new studies (Subject of the Main Clause) indicate (Main Clause Verb)

that ( starting of Dependent Clause)

Many people ( Subject of DC)

{ become ( Verb of DC) Obese }: Verb Phrase

more ( Comparison structure: more -than) :

1) due to ( prepositional phrase) the fact that [their bodies burn calories too slowly ( too slowly is the adverb for burn)]: DC

than ( Comparison Structure: more - than)

overeating ( Gerund Noun )

Errors:

Meaning issue:

The meaning of the sentence is Two studies have indicated that people become obese more because they are losing less weight than because they are eating/gaining more.

However, option A's comparison structure cannot convey that meaning.

Grammatical issue:

The "more - than" parallel is wrong here.

Many people become obese

: more due to the fact...........

: than overeating: Makes no sense ( Many people become obese overeating)





Option B:

Due to their burning calories too slowly: Wrong.

1) It seems like due to "their bodies", everything is happening.

Also the parallel :

than

" to eating too much " is wrong ( Many people become obese to eating too much : Wrong)

Option C :

Structure-wise issue: Wrong parallel again ( same as options A and B)

Also

meaning wise parallelism is slightly missing.

Their bodies burn calories too slowly.

They are overeaters ( Could have been better, Had this been " they eat too much" )

Option D: Corrected all the errors mentioned above.

Option E: GMATNinja explained already.

avigutman whats the comparison issue in C? Than that they are seems to indicate same emaning as ecause. Also in D eating too much doesnt transaate to overeating

Hey Elite097

Happy to help you with this.


The issue with choice C has to do with both grammar and meaning. From a grammatical perspective, we're dealing with simple parallelism. Let's compare choices C and D:

C: Two new studies indicate that many people become obese more because their bodies burn calories too slowly than that they are overeaters.

D: Two new studies indicate that many people become obese more because their bodies burn calories too slowly than because they eat too much.

As you can see from the above, the two clauses are not parallel in choice C.


From a meaning perspective, both clauses after "more" and "than" provide the reason for obesity. The use of "that" in choice C is incorrect after "than" because the start of the sentence doesn't already mention that we're discussing "reasons". For instance, had choice C been:

C: Two studies indicate that the reason many people become obese is more that their bodies burn calories too slowly than that they are overeaters.

...then it would have been okay to change "because" to "that". But, since that isn't the case, both clauses in choice D must contain "because" to establish that these are potential reasons for obesity.



The word "too" has a negative connotation in English. For example:

Too good to be true = suspicious or untrue

Similarly, eating too much = eating more than necessary = overeating.

So, "eating too much" does indeed translate into "overeating".


I hope this answers your questions adequately. Please feel free to revert for further clarification, if required.


Happy Learning!

Abhishek

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