PrepTest 135, Section 4, Question 10
In trying to reduce the amount of fat(42 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(11 more words not shown)
- AMany more people(15 more words not shown)
- BHigher prices over(19 more words not shown)
- CPeople who reduce(30 more words not shown)
- DPeople who reduce(22 more words not shown)
- EStudies have shown(10 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What are they eating instead?
Cutting out steak won't necessarily reduce someone's fat intake if the replacement is ice cream, doughnuts, or potato chips. Removing one source of fat doesn't tell us what happened to the rest of the diet. We need to look at the food that took its place.
The comparison is striking: people who reduced their red-meat consumption now consume more fat, on average, than people who didn't. That isn't the same as saying every person who cut back increased their own fat intake. We're comparing the two groups' current diets.
What we’re looking for
To explain that difference, I'd expect the people who cut back to have replaced red meat with something even fattier. Keep the focus on fat. A food's sugar content or its overall reputation as healthy won't answer this particular question.
Working the answers
- A
The size of each group doesn't explain the average fat intake within it. The meat reducers could be a huge majority or a small minority, and we'd still need to know why their diets contain more fat.
- B
Higher prices could explain why people buy less red meat. But we already know they've cut back. We need to explain their greater fat consumption, and B doesn't tell us what food replaced the meat.
- C
This mentions other fatty foods, which makes it tempting. But it says the two groups consume as much of those foods as each other. That doesn't supply the extra fat needed to explain why the people reducing red meat have substantially higher fat intake overall. It doesn't say that the meat reducers choose fattier replacements than the foods they gave up.
- DCorrect
The people who cut back replace red meat with cheese and baked goods that are richer in fat. Now reducing one source of fat brings in a fattier substitute. That supplies a reason their total fat intake can be higher than that of people who continue eating red meat.
This is what C lacked. Continuing to eat other fatty foods at the same level as the comparison group doesn't explain an excess; replacing the meat with foods richer in fat gives us a mechanism for it.
- E
A revised estimate of red meat's fat content doesn't change what either group actually eats. Even if the meat contains less fat than people thought, that fact alone doesn't explain why reducing it leaves one group eating substantially more fat. We still need information about the rest of their diet.
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