Carcass wrote:
Ironically, people who use aspartame as a sweetener to reduce their caloric intake could wind up defeating their purpose, since studies show that high levels of aspartame may trigger a craving for carbohydrates by depleting the brain of a chemical that registers carbohydrate satiety.
Which of the following conclusions can most properly be drawn if the statements above are true?
(A) Aspartame can be more hazardous than carbohydrates to people's health.
(B) People who do not use aspartame are not likely to develop a craving for carbohydrates.
(C) The caloric content of foods that are high in carbohydrates is significant.
(D) People tend to prefer sweet foods to those high in carbohydrates.
(E) Food products that contain aspartame are typically low in carbohydrates.
This problem seems to me best by eliminating wrong answer choices.
(A) Aspartame can be more hazardous than carbohydrates to people's health.
Passage never refers to health —> out of scope (B) People who do not use aspartame are not likely to develop a craving for carbohydrates. [/size][/color]
This is a trap for people that see the uses certain words and jump to the wrong conclusion. The passage specifically states that “high levels of aspartame may trigger a craving for carbohydrates. There is nothing that you can really conclude from this because the cause in the passage is completely different from cause in the answer choice (high levels of aspartame is not use of aspartame). Also the use of “may” gives a probabilistic relationship rather than a definite one. Another way of thinking about this is saying “If I use low levels aspartame I am also not likely to crave carbohydrates as well since I’m not using high levels of aspartame”. This just contradicted answer choice (B) and hence is wrong.(C) The caloric content of foods that are high in carbohydrates is significant.
Let’s skip for now. I’ll address this at the end. (D) People tend to prefer sweet foods to those high in carbohydrates.
This is not supported in the passage. (E) Food products that contain aspartame are typically low in carbohydrates.[/quote]
This is another trap. The passage states that people use aspartame to lower their caloric intake. high levels of aspartame may trigger a craving for carbohydrates. It uses these words very cleverly for you to make a logical jump that foods that contain aspartame are typically low in carbohydrates
Ok back to (C). First of all I want to say that I’m not a big fan of this problem. It was tricky where I chose E. But hey we can all improve by analyzing our mistakes!
(C) The caloric content of foods that are high in carbohydrates is significant.
So in (E) I told you that it was wrong to make such a big logical jump. Can we make a logical jump for (C)? Is this supported in the passage? Let’s state what we know:
1. “ people who use aspartame as a sweetener to reduce their caloric intake”
2. “ could wind up defeating their purpose”
3. “ craving for carbohydrates”
Based on these three statements you can make a logical jump:
1. “Carbohydrate foods have caloric content”
And the from the answer choice they use the words “high” and “significant” which is essentially equal.
That’s why you can make an inference with answer choice (C) and not with answer choice (B) or (E)
27 Jul 2019, 10:50
50% (01:20) correct
