Logical Reasoning

PT137 · S4 · Q3 Consumption of sugar affects

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

  • Save & drill this skill — build targeted practice sets from questions like this one

  • Video walkthroughs — watch every question solved step by step

  • 81 official LSATs — as questions, timed sections & full-length tests

Start practicing free

Consumption of sugar affects the level of unmetabolized sugar in the blood; the level rises following consumption of sugar.

Given that ...

Consuming sugar causes the level of unmetabolized sugar in the blood to rise.

How can it be that ...

People who consume large amounts of sugar tend to have below-average levels of unmetabolized sugar in their blood.

Evaluate

This is sort of a Relative vs. Absolute paradox.

Consuming sugar makes the level of unmetabolized sugar in the blood higher than it was before eating sugar.

But people who consume a lot of sugar have low average unmetabolized sugar in their blood.

Maybe there are certain people whose bodies naturally have very low unmetabolized sugar in the blood. And because they're bodies start off with such low blood sugar, they consume more sugar than the rest of us.

Consuming that sugar raises their blood sugar from very low to below-average.

We could use a similar analogy with LSAT studying.

We could resolve the paradox similarly by saying, .

Goal

Let's look for an answer that gives us a way to describe a person who eats a lot of sugar but still has below-average levels of blood sugar.

3.

Which one of the following, if true, helps most to resolve the apparent paradox described above?

  1. Persons who are overweight tend

    Unclear Impact: overweight

    It's not clear what significance we could get from knowing that overweight people tend to have low blood sugar. Do overweight people consume large amounts of sugar? Possibly, but it's not necessarily a common sense link. Even if we thought to ourselves, "people who are overweight probably consume large amounts of sugar", this would do nothing to resolve the paradox. It would just restate it. We would be thinking, "These overweight people, who consume large amounts of sugar, have below-average blood sugar". That's just reiterating the final sentence. It's not explaining how someone who consumes lots of sugar could have below-average sugar.

    1% picked this

  2. Fruits, vegetables, meats, and dairy

    No Impact

    We don't care from what source people are getting their sugar. We just care about understanding how people who are eating large amounts of sugar, which increases their level of blood sugar, nonetheless have below-average levels of blood sugar.

    0% picked this

  3. Correct

    Consuming large amounts of sugar

    Why this is right

    This gives us a way to explain how someone who consumes a large amount of sugar could end up with below-average levels of unmetabolized sugar. When you consume a large amount of sugar, the body secretes an abnormally high amount of insulin, which metabolizes the sugar in your blood. Thus, you have relatively little unmetabolized sugar in your blood, because the insulin has metabolized most of it. Here's the causal chain we're describing: eat lots ? secrete lots ? sugar gets ? not much of sugar of insulin metabolized unmetab. sugar left Does this cheat the background condition of the paradox? If eating sugar causes the release of insulin, and insulin metabolizes the sugar in your blood, then why did the first sentence say that the level of unmetabolized sugar rises following consumption of sugar? 1. Our blood sugar might initially rise, because it takes some time for the insulin to be released and to travel throughout the bloodstream metabolizing the sugar. 2. This answer is saying that there's a special mechanism that kicks in when large amounts of sugar are consumed. An abnormally high amount of insulin is released. So maybe moderate amounts of sugar don't wake up the insulin dragon, and so the unmetabolized sugar can accumulate in the bloodstream. But consuming a large serving of sugar triggers the insulin dragon to wake up and break down most of the sugar in our blood. It's like the old adage "you gotta spend money to make money", but now it's "you gotta eat a bunch of sugar to metabolize a bunch of sugar".

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

    87% picked this

  4. Consuming large amounts of sugar

    Deepens the Paradox

    (D) is for diabetes, which is what this answer describes. According to this answer, people who consume large amounts of sugar can lose their ability to produce a sugar-metabolizing enzyme. In other words, they lose the ability to metabolize the sugar in their blood, so they should end up with higher than average levels of unmetabolized sugar in their blood. This is the opposite of what we want. It's giving us a way to think that people who consume large amounts of sugar would have more unmetabolized sugar in their blood than others.

    9% picked this

  5. Sugar passes into the bloodstream

    No Impact / No Distinction

    This is clarifying that sugar doesn't get metabolized in the digestive tract, but that has nothing to do with resolving our paradox. This doesn't give us any way to explain how consuming large amounts of sugar (which increases unmetabolized sugar in the blood) is leading to having below-average levels of unmetabolized sugar in the blood.

    2% picked this

Continue the review in LSAT Lab

Save this question, watch the video walkthrough, and drill similar questions in your LSAT Lab account.

Save and practice this skill
LSAT Lab

Turn this review into a targeted study plan.

Save this question, drill more like it, watch the video walkthrough, and track your progress in your LSAT Lab account.

Start practicing free