#22 - When butterfat was considered nutritious and healthful

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Weaken-CE. The correct answer choice is (E)

The public should be encouraged to eat foods with lower fat content. “Imitation” has negative connotations, this author points out, arguing that producers should thus be allowed instead to refer to their products as “lite.”

The question that follows requires that you weaken the argument that “lite” be an allowable substitute for “imitation.”

Answer choice (A): The author is primarily concerned with motivating people to eat healthier diets; an additional benefit for manufacturers would not weaken the argument.

Answer choice (B): If “lite” butter will soon be even lower in butterfat, this choice would actually strengthen the author’s argument in favor of the term “lite.”

Answer choice (C): The word “some” is quite weak—it means “one or more,” so this choice provides that there is at least one person who is not deterred by the term imitation—not much effect either way.

Answer choice (D): The argument in the stimulus concerns the use of the term “lite” and its possible tendency to get people to eat less butterfat. The fact that cholesterol is one of many contributing factors does not weaken the author’s argument.

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice. If the “imitation” label actually drives the majority of people to even lower butterfat products, that seems like a pretty good reason to keep that label, rather than switching to “lite.”

[lsat_novice]

If C had said "most" instead of "some" then would it have been a viable correct answer? I couldn't choose between C and E because I didn't notice the difference between "some" and "most."

Now that I've read your explanation, it makes sense...if it just comes down to those two words. But is there another reason that E is a superior answer to C? I'm just wondering if I'm missing something.

Thanks in advance.

[Adam Tyson]

It's more than just "some" vs "most" here, lsat_novice, but what the some and most represent. In answer C, telling us that some people are not deterred from eating imitation butter does nothing to weaken the claim that we should change the name to deal with the many people who are deterred. "Some are not" is consistent with "many are", and so has no impact on it. It could still be a good thing overall to change the name so that many people might now choose a lower butterfat content product.

Meanwhile, answer E tells us something completely different, that most people currently avoiding imitation butter are choosing something that is better for them due to lower butterfat content. That means that if we change the name and make it more appealing to them, we run the risk of actually enticing them to eat the less healthy product. The whole argument to change the name was about encouraging lower fat content in our diets, and this answer would have the opposite result! So it's not that these two answers are the same except for those two words, but that they differ substantively in what they are describing. Even changing answer C to a "most" answer wouldn't make it good, because it wouldn't hurt the health claim in the argument.

[Mastering_LSAT]

Hello PowerScore,

I was wondering if this weaken question could be approached through causation and an alternate cause?

It appeares to me that this question is a typical causation weaken through an alternate cause. The author believes that allowing the manufactures to rename reduced-butterfat butter from "imitation" to "lite" (cause) will encourage the public's consumption of foods with lower butterfat content (effect).

In a typical LSAT fashion, the cause is presented in the argument's conclusion, and the effect is mentioned in the premises. From the author's standpoint there is only one sufficient and necessary cause that could lead to the stated effect, but if we could find an alternate cause that also leads to the stated effect, then we could weaken the argument. Answer choice (E) presents us with an alternate cause -- keeping in butter's name the word "imitation" (i.e., NOT renaming butter) -- which is leading to the desired effect that the author has declared in the stimulus (encouraging the public's consumption of foods with lower butterfat content).

If answer choice (E) is true, then the author is wrong in thinking that the renaming is the only cause/way to reach the desired effect of encouraging lower butterfat consumption.

Thank you for your help and hard work!

[Robert Carroll]

Mastering_LSAT,

Not only can you do what you did, what you did is exactly why answer choice (E) is correct. Well done!

Robert Carroll