Q5 - Adults who work outside

[missbernadette]

This resolve the discrepancy question is driving me nuts! It states that adults who work outside the home spend 100 minutes less preparing their dinner than adults who do not work outside the home. Yet, their comparisons are about the same when it comes to nutritional value, variety, etc.
How does D resolve anything?
Doesn't D make the discrepancy worse?? I mean, if adults who work outside the home eat dinner at home 20% less AND spend 100 minutes less preparing dinner, then that makes their comparison LESS when comparing them to adults who do not work outside of the home. What gives?

[cyruswhittaker]

Work from "wrong-to-right" on this one. The adults working outside the home spend an average of 100 minutes less preparing meals compared to those who don't work outside the home, yet the dinners eaten at home by the two groups don't differ significantly in terms of nutrition, variety of menus, or number of courses.

So, the answer choice needs to be something that helps to resolve this discrancy.

(A): National guidelines? Irrelevant.
(B): Breakfast?? Irrelevant; the passage is about dinner.
(C): Just reiterates the fact that the adults spend less time with dinner preparation, along with other things, but this doesn't help to resolve the discrepancy.
(D): Correct Answer. This adds another fact that helps resolve the discrepancy. They spend less time preparing the meals, but at the same time, they don't eat as many meals. Thus, in terms of preparation time per meal, there might not be a significant difference, and hence when analyzing only the meals eaten at home, they might not differ significantly in the aspects mentioned.
(E): This actually deepens the discrepancy, by adding additional reasoning for why it would be odd that comparisons reveal no significant difference between the attributes in the meals.

Hope this helps. I think the reason that "wrong to right" works so well for LSAT questions is because they are often not "straightforward" (at least for me!), so it helps to narrow down the choices.

[kpopstar123]

I was really tempted by the answer choice C.

I thought if adults spend 2 hours on less time per day on other chores, which will allow them to eat dinner as well as home working adults.

But this question is wrong because C says including dinner preparation?

Also, I believe A is wrong because it straight out contradicts the argument: if working adults eat 25% more fat than other group, how both of them get same nutritional value?

Thanks!!

[timmydoeslsat]

I was really tempted by the answer choice C.

I thought if adults spend 2 hours on less time per day on other chores, which will allow them to eat dinner as well as home working adults.

But this question is wrong because C says including dinner preparation?

Also, I believe A is wrong because it straight out contradicts the argument: if working adults eat 25% more fat than other group, how both of them get same nutritional value?

Thanks!!

The last comment you made is not accurate. It is not the case that the adults working at home eat 25% more fat than the adults that do not work at home. Rather, these working at home adults eat 25% more fat than what a guideline suggests one should eat. So while there is no contradiction between this answer choice and the statements in the stimulus, we do not have an answer choice that would help distinguish the two groups. Our statements would allow us to infer that the other group would also have 25% more fat than the guidelines suggest as well.

Answer choice C is not a good answer either. We already know that the adults that work outside of the home are spending less time each week preparing food. This answer choice is simply giving us more information about those adults not working at home. Even if this answer choice did not state food preparation, it still leads us to wonder why the adults that do not work at home can have the same quality of dinners eaten at home than adults that work at home.

Answer choice (D) resolves this. The adults that do not work at home simply do not eat as many meals at home. This would allow the lack of total time of food preparation to not play as big of a factor as we initially suppose it may be.

[dean.won]

got this through poe but still dont understand 100%

if ppl who work outside the home eat at home 20% less often than ppl who dont work outside the home wouldnt it increase the difference of the number of courses eaten?

also, how does eating less often at home lessen the difference in nutritional value between the two groups?

[nandy_millette]

Hi dean won,

I also got this correct by assuming D meant less dinner meals eaten at home= less meals prepared at home= less preparation time with no real difference in nutrition, variety and number of courses of the meals prepared at home,

A more detailed analysis is:

Stimulus is telling us:
There is a difference between the total preparation time of dinner meals (per week) of people who do not work outside the home vs people who work outside the home (people who stay at home spend 100 minutes more preparation time per week).

However, there is no difference per dinner eaten at home in 1)nutritional value 2)variety of menu and 3)number of courses (note number of courses per dinner meal not number of dinners)

So the stimulus is assuming that because stay at home people spend more time per week preparing dinner meals their meals would not be the same in the 3 aspects as people who work outside the home

i.e stimulus is assuming more preparation time= more nutritional value, variety of meal and number of courses

Answer choice D is telling us that people who live at home eat dinner at home 20% less often then people who do not which is the correct answer.

Consider it-

People who do not work outside the home eat--> 100 meals per week at home

People who work outside the home--> eat dinner at home 20% less i.e. 80 dinner meals eaten at home per week ( maybe the remaining 20 dinner meals is eaten outside the home i.e. restaurants/cafe and as such not prepared at home)

Less dinner meals eaten at home per week = less dinner meals prepared at home per week = less preparation time.....this clearly explains the discrepancy.