Dietician: “The French Paradox” refers

Answer choices

1. A

   Unclear Impact12% picked this

   French men consume as much red wine as French women do, yet French men have a higher rate of heart

   Without knowing whether French men have more / similar / less fat in their diet to French women, it's hard to know what effect this would have. The risk factors for heart disease might be higher for French men in general, and red wine reduces their risk but not down to the level of French women who drink red wine.

   12%
2. B

   Correct60% picked this

   A greater intake of red wine among North Americans would likely lead to a higher incidence of liver

   Why this is right

   This is objecting to the move from "red wine can lower your risk of heart disease" to "red wine can make you healthier". By bringing up some non-heart related health dangers of drinking more red wine, this answer is undermining the Conclusion. Would people really end up healthier if they traded a lower risk of heart disease for a higher risk of liver and other illnesses?

   Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   60%
3. C

   Too Weak5% picked this

   Not all French people have a diet that includes large amounts of fat and a high

   "Not all A's are B" = At least one (some) A is not B. Does it hurt this argument to say, "There is at least one French person that does not have a diet that includes large amounts of fat and a high quantity of red wine"? No, the author was never assuming that every single person in France had high fat / high red wine diet. She's just generalizing about the population in an "on average" sort of way. Answers like this that only provide "at least one data point" are almost always wrong on Strengthen, Weaken, and Paradox, because they're too weak to have much impact.

   5%
4. D

   Out of Scope: different recommendation4% picked this

   All evidence suggests that the healthiest way to decrease the chance of heart disease is to exercise and keep

   The author didn't promise that her recommendation was the healthiest thing you could do. She is only claiming that North Americans would be healthier, all other things being equal, if they drank more red wine. If drinking more red wine would make North Americans healthier than they are now, then her conclusion was correct and she wins the case. It doesn't matter if some other course of action would be even more healthy than the one the author is recommending, because the author has only claimed that drinking more red wine would be an improvement, not that it would be the best thing to do.

   4%
5. E

   Unclear Impact18% picked this

   Many other regions have much lower rates of heart disease than France, though their populations consume even less red

   Like with (A), we can't judge this comparison without knowing whether these other regions have levels of fat in their diet comparable to people in France.

   18%