Proponent: Irradiation of food by gamma

Answer choices

1. A

   No Impact: might spoil7% picked this

   After irradiation, food might still spoil if kept in storage for a long time after being

   This is very weakly worded ('might'), so it's unlikely to have much impact as an objection. When food spoils, we don't eat it, and all food (whether irradiated or not) is going to eventually spoil. So it's not clear how we'd use this to say that irradiating food could be a bad idea for nutrition's sake.

   7%
2. B

   Correct73% picked this

   Irradiated food would still need cooking, or, if eaten raw, it would not have the vitamin

   Why this is right

   This is allowing us to make an objection about the nutritional impact of irradiating food. Let's say that a piece of broccoli has 100 points of vitamin content in it, but when you cook the broccoli, you usually remove 30 points of that. The author is saying that irradiating food also removes 30 points of vitamin content, so what's the big deal? We can object that some people eat raw broccoli and get all 100 vitamin points. So if we go irradiating all the broccoli, then raw broccoli will only have 70 points. And, we can object that cooking irradiated food might further deplete an item of vitamin concent. Irradiating it brought it from 100 to 70. Then cooking that irradiated food brings it from 70 to 40. So since irradiated raw food would be worse nutritionally than raw food that isn't irradiated, and irradiated cooked food would be worse than cooked food that isn't irradiated, then we do have reason to reject irradiation on the grounds of nutrition.

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

   73%
3. C

   No Impact14% picked this

   Vitamin loss is a separate issue

   The author clearly knows that vitamin loss is a separate issue. She talks about both of them, but never blurs the line between them. Also, this answer doesn't give us any way to say that there IS a nutritional reason why we shouldn't irradiate food.

   14%
4. D

   No Impact: pills1% picked this

   Vitamins can be ingested in pill form as well as

   This has nothing to do with whether irradiating food would make it less nutritional than if we hadn't irradiated that food. This is talking about something else altogether, which is taking vitamin pills.

   1%
5. E

   No Impact5% picked this

   That food does not spoil before it can be offered to the consumer is primarily a benefit to the

   The part of irradiating food that relates to spoilage doesn't have anything to do with nutrition. Spoilage is just talking about how long a food is available to eat, not how much nutritional value is in the food should you choose to eat it (in its pre-spoiled state).

   5%