Bunuel wrote:
Typically, people who have diets high in saturated fat have an increased risk of heart disease. Those who replace saturated fat in their diets with unsaturated fat decrease their risk of heart disease. Therefore, people who eat a lot of saturated fat can lower their risk of heart disease by increasing their intake of unsaturated fat.
Which one of the following, if assumed, most helps to justify the reasoning above?
(A) People who add unsaturated fat to their diets will eat less food that is high in saturated fat.
(B) Adding unsaturated fat to a diet brings health benefits other than a reduced risk of heart disease.
(C) Diet is the most important factor in a person’s risk of heart disease.
(D) Taking steps to prevent heart disease is one of the most effective ways of increasing life expectancy.
(E) It is difficult to move from a diet that is high in saturated fat to a diet that includes very little fat.
EXPLANATION FROM Fox LSAT
Um, no. This argument makes a gigantic assumption: that increasing unsaturated fat will reduce saturated fat. But that’s just not necessarily true.
Example: I’m salivating, contemplating my soon-to-arrive triple bacon cheeseburger with extra mayo, with a side of fries
and onion rings, both deep fried in lard and dipped in ranch dressing. But then I go “ut-oh! I forgot to be ‘heart healthy!’ I better fix that. Ahem. Excuse me, miss? May I please add avocado to my burger?” Stupid, right? Obviously the additional unsaturated avocado fat is not going to decrease my saturated fat intake from the burger, bacon, etcetera.
The question asks me, “Which one of the following, if assumed, most helps to justify the reasoning above.” In other words, we’re asked to strengthen the argument. So we have to switch teams. Imagine that the speaker of the argument has just paid our law firm a six-figure retainer. We’re going to argue
for them now. We’ve already identified a significant chink in the argument’s armor, so one really good way to strengthen the argument would be to patch up that hole. It’s probably not true in real life, but what if an answer said, “Increasing unsaturated fat intake decreases saturated fat intake”? Wouldn’t that be awesome? It’s not relevant whether we think it actually is true in real life. The point is, if we could get a witness to testify to that fact, we would be in a much better position to win our case. Which would justify our six-figure retainer. Which would help pay off our goddamned six-figure law school loans. Let’s get to work.
A) Boom, exactly. If this is true, our client is going to win and we’re one step closer to getting out of the debt-slavery we sold ourselves into. We’ve gotta love this answer.
B) Nah. “Other health benefits” weren’t part of the argument. Only heart health was part of the argument. This answer is irrelevant.
C) Even if this is true, it doesn’t connect adding avocado to decreasing bacon. No way.
D) This is nice, but it wouldn’t help our client win. We had to connect “more unsaturated fat” to “less saturated fat.” Our client’s argument sucked without that connection. A provided that connection. This doesn’t.
E) This is certainly true in real life. But it’s irrelevant to the argument, because difficulty of switching was never mentioned, and because this answer doesn’t plug the giant gaping hole in the argument.
Answer A plugged up the argument’s big hole, so we go with A.