PrepTest 108, Section 3, Question 21
Advertisement for a lactase supplement: Lactase, an enzyme(67 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(8 more words not shown)
- AEating solid food(13 more words not shown)
- BMost people who(18 more words not shown)
- CThe production of(8 more words not shown)
- DLactose intolerance can(4 more words not shown)
- ESome dairy foods,(17 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Does trouble digesting milk under these conditions mean someone should take a supplement in everyday life?
Let's keep the two similar names straight. Lactose is the sugar in dairy foods. Lactase is the enzyme that helps digest it. The experiment found signs of lactose intolerance after people drank milk on an empty stomach. I want to know whether those people would have the same trouble with a meal. We should accept what happened in the experiment while questioning how closely it matches their normal habits.
There's another possibility: they could avoid dairy. A supplement might help someone who wants to keep consuming it, but a person who doesn't consume dairy might have no reason to take one. Showing that people have trouble with a food doesn't, by itself, establish that they should take a supplement to digest it.
What we’re looking for
For the weakening question, that's where I'd initially look. Give us a reason these people don't need the proposed remedy. My first thought is that they could avoid the food that creates the problem. The broader concern is the move from the experiment's results to a recommendation for 50 million people.
Working the answers
- A
This goes in the wrong direction for the empty-stomach concern. Eating solid food would decrease production of the enzyme that helps digest lactose. That doesn't show that eating a meal would remove the difficulty observed in the experiment. It gives us no reason to think the supplement recommendation overstates the need.
- BCorrect
Here's a different problem with the experiment: the amount of milk. A liter is more lactose than most dairy consumers get in a meal. Trouble handling that amount doesn't tell us how they handle their usual serving.
Think of someone having a glass of milk or some ice cream. That person's body might handle the smaller amount without the difficulty produced by the experiment's much larger serving. We don't have to prove that everyone tolerates a smaller serving. The mismatch gives us a reason to question using this experiment to count how many people should take supplements. It reaches our concern about an unnecessary recommendation through quantity rather than dairy avoidance.
- C
This compares lactase production at different ages. But we don't know the subjects' ages, the ages of the people receiving the recommendation, or whether the increase prevents intolerance. People could produce more lactase as they age and still produce too little for the dairy they consume. The age trend alone doesn't undermine this estimate.
- D
Difficulty getting proper nutrition would give us another reason to take lactose intolerance seriously. It doesn't show that the supplement is unnecessary or that the experiment overstates how many people need it. If anything, this points toward a reason to address the problem.
- E
Harder-to-digest lactose in another food doesn't show that fewer people need help digesting dairy. Nor does it establish that a lactase supplement would fail to help. We need a reason to doubt the recommendation, and extra digestive difficulty doesn't supply one.
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