PrepTest 102, Section 3, Question 5
Adults who work outside the home spend, on(53 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(13 more words not shown)
- AThe fat content(23 more words not shown)
- BAdults who do(18 more words not shown)
- CAdults who work(27 more words not shown)
- DAdults who work(21 more words not shown)
- EAdults who work(23 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Less cooking time per week doesn't necessarily mean less cooking time per dinner.
The first comparison makes sense. Someone who works outside the home might come home tired, pick up prepared food, or have a partner help with cooking. There are several possible reasons for spending less time preparing dinner. None has been established yet.
Then we learn that the dinners eaten at home are similar in nutrition, variety, and number of courses. Why aren't the meals noticeably simpler if this group spends less time preparing them?
Maybe they prepare fewer dinners. Imagine one person makes five dinners at 100 minutes each, while another makes four dinners at 100 minutes each. The second person spends 100 fewer minutes in the kitchen that week without cutting a single minute from the preparation of any dinner. Those are illustrative numbers, but they show how weekly time and time per meal can tell different stories.
What we’re looking for
For the explanation question, that's what I'd look for: fewer meals being prepared, rather than the same number of meals being rushed. Then the dinners people do eat at home could still be just as elaborate.
Working the answers
- A
This tells us that one group's dinners exceed a fat guideline. It doesn't compare the two groups' preparation patterns or explain why their dinners have similar nutritional value despite different weekly preparation times. Both groups could exceed the same guideline. It also leaves the similarity in variety and number of courses unexplained.
- B
Breakfast isn't the meal being compared. We have a difference in time spent preparing dinner and a similarity in the dinners eaten at home. Preparing breakfast more often doesn't explain that combination. We'd need another connection that B never gives us.
- C
Less time on household responsibilities generally doesn't explain how the dinners remain comparable. Perhaps the difference concerns cleaning, laundry, or other tasks. Even if dinner preparation accounts for part of it, we already know that preparation time differs. C adds a broader time comparison without resolving the puzzle about the meals.
- DCorrect
Adults working outside the home eat dinner at home less often. That makes fewer home dinners a plausible explanation for the lower weekly preparation time. They could devote comparable time and care to each dinner they do prepare at home while spending less time over the whole week.
The answer doesn't prove the two groups spend exactly the same number of minutes per meal. It doesn't need to. It supplies a missing difference in how often those meals occur, which helps the weekly time difference coexist with similar meals.
- E
Less advance planning gives us no clear reason to expect comparable nutrition, variety, or courses with less preparation time. If anything, it might make that result harder to explain: how are the meals staying varied without much planning? We shouldn't assume planning is always necessary, but E supplies no mechanism that resolves the comparison.
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