Q13 - Health officials claim that

[ellisz1]

I had a difficult time deciding between B and E, but I ultimately went with E. Can anybody explain why E is wrong and B is right? Thanks.

[nbayar1212]

E is wrong because the claim in the stimulus is more about a general influence that TV has on our dietary habits and not the specific kinds of foods and beverages that we will end up consuming (which is more what E is getting at with the phrase "make accurate predictions about foods that will become popular."

Also, we don't need to assume anything as strong as what will "become popular" as thats clearly a much stronger claim than "has a bad influence."

Lastly, whether or not health officials themselves get the information to predict anything is totally irrelevant. The stimulus simply makes a claim about the world i.e. TV will be a bad influence on us. It doesn't say "TV will have a bad influence on us AND the health officials will know about it," or something along those lines. As such, we don't need to assume that anyone will actually end up knowing about it.

B on the other hand, is right because in order to establish that what we see on television will have a bad influence on our dietary habits, we would need to assume that television itself DOES IN FACT influence our dietary habits in the first place - which is what B is getting at. Also, if we negate it to say "seeing foods and beverages consumed on television DOES NOT increase the likelihood that viewers will consume similar kinds of foods" the conclusion in the stimulus simply won't follow anymore.

Does this help clear it up?

[Mab6q]

I think E is also wrong because it's talking about eating and drinking habits, whereas the stimulus refers to "foods and beverages".

[ohthatpatrick]

Great explanations! I'm just going to provide a quick complete one for posterity.

Necessary Assumption

Conc:
watching TV has a bad influence on dietary habits of viewers

Prem:
foods/beverages mentioned or consumed on TV are extremely low in nutritional value

Potential Objection:
Hey, man ... just cuz I see something on TV doesn't mean I'm going to do it. (i.e. the author is assuming that viewers are impressionable and will incorporate the foods/beverages they've seen into their own dietary habits)

(A) this actually goes backwards ... it sounds like TV is reflecting what viewers eat, whereas the author thought that TV was helping to shape what viewers eat

(B) Sounds good. If viewing these foods/beverages did NOT increase the likelihood that viewers eat/drink them, then TV could have no influence on its viewers' dietary habits.

(C) the food and bev industry is out of scope. The author doesn't have to assume there's any puppetmaster orchestrating what foods/drinks are shown.

(D) "only" is far too extreme

(E) Tempting, but health officials being able to accurately predict which foods/drinks become popular is not within the core:
Food/drinks on TV low nutrition --> Bad influence on viewers' diet
Even if health officials CAN'T accurately predict which foods/drinks become popular, they could still claim that watching TV has a bad influence on viewers' diets.

(B) is the correct answer.