Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Medium

PT140 S1 Q15 Explanation

Greatly exceeding the recommended

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

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Stimulus

Greatly exceeding the recommended daily intake of vitamins A and D is dangerous, for they can be toxic at high levels. For some vitamin-fortified foods, each serving, as defined by the manufacturer, has 100 percent of the recommended daily intake of these vitamins. But many people overestimate what counts as a standard to three times what the manufacturers define as standard servings.

What this question is testing

Most Supported

Your task

Break the argument into its conclusion and evidence, then do exactly what the question stem asks with that structure.

Common trap

Answers that sound relevant to the topic but don't connect to the argument's actual reasoning.

Winning move

Predict what a right answer must do, then test each choice against the conclusion-evidence gap.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
15.

Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the

Answer choices

  1. Too Strong/Specific: few people9% picked this

    Few people who consume vitamin-fortified foods are aware of the recommended daily intake of vitamins

    Does this paragraph tell us whether less than 50% of people are aware of the recommended daily intake of vitamins A and D? No. We know that many people are unaware of what constitutes a standard serving. But we don't know what people's awareness level is of the recommended daily intake of these vitamins.

  2. Correct75% picked this

    Some people who consume vitamin-fortified foods exceed the recommended daily intake of vitamins

    Why this is right

    This has lovably weak, provable language: some A standard serving of some foods fortified with vitamins A and D contains 100% of the recommended daily intake of those vitamins. Since many people consume two to three times the standard serving of these vitamin-fortified food, they exceed the recommended daily intake of vitamins A and D.

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

  3. Out of Scope: believe it's healthy6% picked this

    Some people mistakenly believe it is healthy to consume more than the recommended daily intake of

    We don't have any information relating to what people believe about consuming more than the recommended daily intake. The passage isn't saying they consume two to three times the standard serving because they believe that this would be healthy. It's saying that they consume that much because they don't realize that a standard serving is actually only about 1/2 or 1/3 as much as they're estimating it is.

  4. Too Strong: most / should5% picked this

    Most people who eat vitamin-fortified foods should not take any

    There's nothing in this paragraph that allows us to talk about more than 50% of people. We only hear that "many people" overestimate a standard serving. There also isn't any "should", although Most Supported questions will sometimes go from saying something is toxic / dangerous to saying, in a correct answer, that we should not do that. This answer is appealing on a common sense level, because we might think, "People eating vitamin-fortified foods are already screwing up by exceeding the recommended daily intake. They shouldn't make the situation even worse by taking vitamin supplements on top of that." But we don't know that most (more than 50%) of people who eat vitamin-fortified foods are already screwing up by eating more than the recommended daily intake. We only know that's true for many people (at least 10 ppl). Also, even for these many people, it's extreme to say they shouldn't take any vitamin supplements, since we're only worried about them piling on to their excess of vitamin A and D. We don't have any problem with them taking Vitamin C or E supplements, if those vitamins weren't in their vitamin-fortified food in the first place.

  5. Out of Scope: manufacturers' awareness5% picked this

    Manufacturers are unaware that many people consume vitamin-fortified foods in amounts greater than the

    It might be natural to derive a big inference from this paragraph like, "Oh, no, people who are eating 2-3x as much cereal as they're supposed to are overeating vitamins to toxic levels" and then think, "Wow, someone should tell cereal manufacturers about this. They must be unaware." But that is way too much speculation on our part. These Inference questions are about finding the most derivable answer choice. The claim that could best be proven in court, based only on the evidence in the paragraph (+ our common sense). Manufacturers could be aware of this phenomenon; it doesn't offend common sense. After all, glue manufacturers can be aware that some people huff glue. They can put on their products warnings like, "Don't huff this", but they're still going to put out their product and let people take personal responsibility for any abuse or misuse of the product.

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