Bunuel wrote:
While certainly a nuisance for anyone, the flu can be deadly for infants and the elderly. Doctors recommend that, in preparation for flu season, senior citizens increase the amount of antioxidants in their diet and receive the flu vaccine. To help their seniors prevent the onset of the flu, a local retirement facility plans to substitute wild blackberries and raspberries for the usual melon and pineapple in its breakfasts and desserts.
Which of the following constitutes a reason to believe that the retirement facility’s plan will be successful?
A. Wild blackberries and raspberries are not significantly more expensive on a per-pound basis than are pineapples and melons.
B. Most of the residents at the retirement facility prefer wild blackberries and raspberries to melon and pineapple.
C. None of the residents at the retirement facilities have a known a fruit allergy.
D. Wild blackberries and raspberries have a significantly higher antioxidant content than do pineapples and melons.
E. Wild blackberries and raspberries are harvested locally in the months immediately prior to flu season.
VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:
In this Plan/Strategy question, the plan and the objective have an extremely large gap between them. The goal is to help prevent the flu, and one way to do that is to increase antioxidants. And the retirement facility then plans to replace melon and pineapple with raspberries and strawberries. But how do raspberries and strawberries connect to antioxidants??
This is a gap wide enough that most test-takers should be able to anticipate choice D. "Flu is prevented by antioxidants, so let's eat X" should give you pause no matter what X is: the argument could just as easily have said that they would serve more fish or ice cream or frozen pizza. Without knowing that that food would increase antioxidant levels, you don't have much of a plan.
So choice D is correct: if the new foods contain more antioxidants than the foods are replacing, then the end results (more antioxidants --> prevent the flu) are much more likely.
With choice A, note that the goal has nothing to do with saving money - it's only to prevent the flu. So the cost is irrelevant to this particular argument. With choice B, preference only matters to the extent of "will people eat the berries?" The goal isn't to make the residents happier, so unless you know that they will reduce their fruit consumption altogether their preference doesn't matter. Plus, remember, without choice D you do not know that the berries even contain antioxidants!
Choice C does not strengthen the plan, either. Say that it were incorrect and one person had a strawberry allergy that would give him a rash, but everyone else were perfectly happy eating berries: the plan could still be a rousing success. Plus, again, until you know the information in choice D you just don't know that the berries would even help. And choice E is similar to choice A: it shows that serving the berries will be convenient (and maybe inexpensive), but that's not the goal: the stated goal is simply to increase antioxidants.
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29 Mar 2024, 01:30
12%
(01:24)
wrong 
