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  3. The citizens of Forsythe have adopted more healthful lifestyles. Their responses

The citizens of Forsythe have adopted more healthful lifestyles. Their responses

游客2024-01-12  15
问题 The citizens of Forsythe have adopted more healthful lifestyles. Their responses to a recent survey show that in their eating habits they conform more closely to government nutritional recommendations than they did ten years ago. Furthermore, there has been a fourfold increase in sales of food products containing kiran, a substance that a scientific study has shown reduces cholesterol. This trend is also evident in reduced sales of sulia, a food that few of the healthiest citizens regularly eat.
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
选项
答案     In this argument, the author claims that Forsythe citizens have adopted a more healthful lifestyle based on a survey and some market facts. Although this conclusion might be correct, there are some flaws in his lines of reasoning that prevent us making an informed judgment. Specifically, his or her conclusion relies upon a series of unfounded assumptions, which, when prove unwarranted, will seriously weaken the claim that Forsythe citizens have adopted a healthier lifestyle.
    To start with, the author cites a survey about people’s conformity to nutritional recommendations with an underlying assumption about the validity of this survey. Yet, no additional supporting information is provided and this survey could be problematic because we do not know where it was conducted and how many people were interviewed. If it turns out that this survey was done in a grocery store specialized in organic foods that targets a specific group of people, the result could be potentially biased while in reality most consumers would not conform to national nutritional recommendations better than they did ten years ago. In this case the survey would be invalid, and the subsequent interpretation wouldn’t be meaningful.
    Second, before the implication of the change in the sale of products containing kiran could be made, we need to consider if such products are truly wholesome as the author implicitly assumes. While kiran itself may contain health benefits, other substances in those products might be detrimental, because of the toxic chemicals they might contain during the manufacturing processes. Such scenarios cannot be confidently rejected by the available information presented by the author, and a thorough report on the health effects of the food products containing kiran is needed to evaluate different possibilities. The author’s argument could be weakened should the report find those products capable of producing negative impacts on human health.
    Third, the author quotes the decrease in the sale of sulia, which the healthiest citizens rarely eat, and assumes this is a piece of evidence that people have acquired a more healthful lifestyle. Nonetheless, he or she does not conclusively establish that the change is driven by people’s health awareness. In reality, many factors can change the sale of a particular food product. Given the limited amount of information we can’t determine if health awareness is the decisive one. For example, it may later turn out that people refrain from purchasing sulia due to its exorbitant price, and in this case the sale of sulia does not lend any support to the author’s conclusion.
    Finally, even if we acknowledge that all the aforementioned assumptions are valid and the interpretation of the change in sales of different products is reasonable, a critical question still needs our close attention: can eating habits accurately and faithfully reflect people’s health lifestyle? While the author here assumes a strong link, the true answer may not be the case. A more comprehensive study on the lifestyles of Forsythe residents would be highly valuable with regard to this question. If the new study reveals a strong commitment to physical exercise and mental well-being in addition to nutrition intake, the author’s conclusion will undoubtedly be more convincing.
    To sum up, although it may be true that Forsythe citizens now have a more healthful lifestyle, this conclusion cannot be safely deduced from the author’s argument and lines of reasoning due to some of his or her questionable assumptions. When these assumptions turn out to be wrong, his or her conclusion about the lifestyle of the citizens of Forsythe will be substantially undermined. (578 words)
解析     这道题目的结构很简单，作者通过三个并列的证据得出了F地居民生活习惯变得更为健康的结论，框架如下：
    调查表明居民饮食结构比十年前更符合政府的推荐+含有kiran物质的食物销量上升，可以减少胆固醇+含有sulia物质的食物销量下降(健康人不吃suIia)→结论：Forsythe居民生活习惯变得更健康了
    这三个信息本身都存在一些问题，这些变化不一定真实反映出F地居民在饮食习惯上的变化。例如某种物质的摄入量发生了变化，究竟是人们的健康意识发生了改变。还是仅仅是这些物质的价格发生了变化?针对每一个单独的点我们都可以进行分析，这是最为简单的分析方法。
    但是，如果只分析以上的内容，文章的分数不会高于5分，因为本文还有一个很重要但是却很隐秘的点——饮食习惯能否真实反映出健康的生活习惯?这里作者其实做了一个偷换概念的假设，把生活习惯与饮食习惯等同了起来。这一类型的“偷换概念”在GRE作文中往往是不容易发现的点，但是却非常重要。很多时候一个概念的变化可以成为破题的关键，其他时候则成为了冲击高分的必备段落。
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