Q7 - Nutritionist: Contrary to popular belief, a high-calciu

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Strengthen the View (EXCEPT)

Stimulus Breakdown:
To prevent osteoporosis, don't go high-calcium. Go low-protein and high fruits/veggies and minimum quantity of meat/dairy. Also you gotta do weight-bearing exercise (b/c resistance thickens bones).

Answer Anticipation:
This says "view" not argument, so we're not trying to find a conclusion/evidence structure. It looks like we just need things that say "low protein / high fruits and veggies / minimum meat and dairy / resistance exercise" are good for dense bones, or things that say high-calcium diet doesn't help us to get dense bones.

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Strengthens, since weight-bearing exercise is supposed to preserve bone density. This is "no cause, no effect" (a lack of weight-bearing exercise ... i.e. they're weightless ... Is being associated with a loss in bone density)

(B) This doesn't strengthen. It isn't reinforcing any of the connections the author laid out between diet/exercise and bone density.

(C) Strengthens, since it reinforces the connection between a low-protein diet and good bone density. (yes cause, yes effect). In countries with low protein diets, we see low rates of osteoporosis.

(D) Strengthens, since it reinforces the initial idea that high-calcium does NOT help prevent osteo.

(E) Strengthens, since it reinforces a connection between low-protein and preventing osteoporosis. The weird part of this answer is that if they're STRICT vegetarians, then they're not eating meat. Does that go against the idea that "a minimum quantity of meat and dairy is essential"? I first read that sentence as saying, "Here's the required diet: lots of fruit and veggies + a small amount of meat and dairy." But we could read it similarly to how we hear "If you want to do well in law school, keep your drinking to a minimum." That use of 'minimum' doesn't mean, "make sure you do at least SOME drinking". It means "do little or no drinking". That's apparently the usage in our second sentence here: "Make sure you're eating tons of fruit and veggies, and try to keep your meat and dairy to a minimum." In that interpretation, NO meat would be a good thing.

Takeaway/Pattern: EXCEPT questions are often tricky. First of all, don't expect the correct answer to have the opposite function of the question stem (i.e. on this one, don't look for which answer WEAKENS). Usually, the correct answer is just neutral/irrelevant. The idea in (A) was tricky to decipher (you can't do weight-bearing exercise in a weightless environment, I suppose), and the language of the 2nd sentence made it seem like (E) might be a mismatch. Ultimately, it was only my confidence that (B) was doing nothing for this author that forced me to make peace with (A) and (E).

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