PrepTest 109, Section 3, Question 24
Dietician: "The French Paradox" refers to the unusual(79 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(12 more words not shown)
- AFrench men consume(22 more words not shown)
- BA greater intake(19 more words not shown)
- CNot all French(17 more words not shown)
- DAll evidence suggests(21 more words not shown)
- EMany other regions(21 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Would this advice actually make North Americans healthier?
The dietician offers wine as an explanation for France's unusual combination of a high-fat diet and relatively little heart disease. That could be an explanation, but what if another difference in habits or living conditions matters? We haven't established that wine is doing the protective work.
Even if it is, can we carry the recommendation over to North Americans? Perhaps the two populations eat different kinds of food. Perhaps North Americans already consume enough alcohol that adding more would create a different problem. Those are possibilities to investigate, not facts we know about either population.
What we’re looking for
For the weakening question, I see two routes. We could challenge the proposed explanation of the French pattern, or show a meaningful difference that makes the recommendation fail for North Americans. Keep the final promise in view: becoming healthier without cutting fat intake. A recommendation could reduce one risk and still have other costs that undermine that promise.
Working the answers
- A
Equal wine consumption doesn't require men and women to have equal rates of heart disease. Other differences could affect the rates, while wine still had some protective effect in both groups. A doesn't isolate wine's effect or show that increasing it would make North Americans less healthy.
- BCorrect
More red wine would likely cause more liver problems and other illnesses among North Americans. That directly challenges the recommendation's promise of better health.
Even if we granted the proposed benefit for heart disease, we would now have a cost on the other side. Reducing one illness doesn't automatically mean people become healthier overall when other illnesses become more common. This is the kind of problem we wanted to check before transferring the recommendation.
We don't need to assume that North Americans are already drinking excessively or that the French avoid these harms. B itself supplies the relevant fact about the people receiving the advice.
- C
The passage describes a population pattern, not an identical diet for every French person. Some individuals could eat less fat or drink less wine while the broad pattern remained. C doesn't tell us how common those exceptions are or whether they account for the low incidence of heart disease. The mere existence of exceptions doesn't overturn this explanation.
- D
The best method isn't necessarily the only method that helps. Exercise and a low-fat diet could be the healthiest approach while another change still offered some benefit. The recommendation specifically addresses people who want a change without cutting fat, so showing that a different approach is better doesn't establish that this one fails.
- E
What else do people in those regions eat? They could consume little wine and also have low-fat diets. That wouldn't test the claim that wine helps counter a high-fat diet. Without comparable information about diet and other relevant differences, their lower heart-disease rates don't undercut the particular recommendation as directly as B does.
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