#18 - Health officials now recommend that people reduce

[lilmissunshine]

Hello,

I thought this question was very weird and none of the answer choice was correct. Could you explain why (E) is relevant to the stimulus?

Thanks a lot!

[James Finch]

Hi Lil Miss Sunshine,

This is a difficult question that relies upon a careful reading of the stimulus to answer correctly. As with any flaw question, always go back over the stimulus and attempt to identify the flaw if you haven't by the time you've reached the question stem. This question type benefits immensely from prephrasing.

Here the key is to notice that the stimulus is dealing with groups and subgroups: foods high in cholesterol/beef, restaurant industry/steak restaurants. Then we're presented with a paradox: consumption of beef is down, supposedly because of health advisories, but steak restaurants are doing better than the restaurant industry as a whole. The stimulus then concludes that "a lot of people are completely ignoring the health recommendation." So what is the issue? People could still go to steak restaurants at the same or even higher rate and still reduce their overall red meat consumption by cutting down hamburgers/carne asada/home consumption etc, meaning the stimulus's conclusion that people are "completely ignoring" the health recommendation isn't necessarily true.

Answer choice (E) gives us one aspect of the possibilities listed above (decreased home consumption), lining up nicely with our prephrase.

Hope this helps!