Benton City residents have adopted healthier lifestyles. A recent surveyof city residents shows that the eating habits of city residents conform moreclosely to government nutritional recommendations than they did ten years ago.During those ten years, local sales of food products containing kiran, asubstance that a scientific study has shown reduces cholesterol, have increasedfourfold, while sales of sulia, a food rarely eaten by the healthiestresidents, have declined dramatically. Because of these positive changes in theeating habits of Benton City residents, we predict that the obesity rate in thecity will soon be well below the national average.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to beanswered in order to decide whether the prediction and the argument on which itis based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questionswould help to evaluate the prediction.
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While it might be true that the obesity rate in Benton City will soon bewell below the average value of the nation, but the author doesn't make cogentinference to validate it. We can easily tell that people in Benton City do havesome changes in their eating habits, but the argument if rife with holes andweak or hidden assumptions. Many questions can be asked by readers, and ifthese questions are not well answered, the argument will be undermined or eventoppled.
By talking about the fact the eating habits of city denizens conform more closelyto the government nutritional recommendations than ten years ago, the authorwants to prove that people are healthier than ten years ago. However, whetherit’s reasonable to use the government's recommendation as a benchmark stillneeds to be considered. Firstly, is the recommendation made by the governmentsuitable for everyone or even most of the people? It's likely that thenutritional recommendations are made for average people in the whole state,regardless of the environment of the specific city. And Benton City is the citythat differs a lot from other cities in our state. People are more easily totake in some nutrition which is not that easy to acquire by others due to thewater quality and so forth. In this sense, this example given by the authorwill not validate the argument efficiently. Moreover, it's also possible thatthe government's recommendation changed a lot during this decade, and thenutrition suggestion in the status quo isn't that perfect compared than the oneten years ago. Even though people's eating habits deviated more from thesuggestion in the past, they were having a better eating habits than they donowadays.
Likewise, the author also cites the dwindling amount of sulia consumed byresidents. The explanation for residents' living a healthier lifestyle given bythe author is that sulia is rarely eaten by the healthiest people.Nevertheless, this seemingly good reason is essentially weak. What ifhealthiest people eat little sulia because sulia is quite expansive andresidents can easily find close and inexpensive substitutions for it? What ifthose healthiest people will become much healthier after they begin having it?If these are true, the author's original argument is totally overturned. Toimprove his argument, the author has to provide more information to exclude allof the possibilities that could undermine the inference process.
Last, the author predicts that the obesity rate will soon be decreased andit will be less than the national average. Even if we admit that residents inBenton City have a better and healthier lifestyle now, this prediction is stillnot easy to hold. Being away from obesity is a concept relevant but not veryclose to the definition of health. This will lead readers to suspect that thisis a misnomer. Furthermore, it's still probable that the obesity rate in BentonCity is too high that even a light decrease of obesity rate will not make sensecompared to the national average. Therefore, lack of evidence will let readersthink a lot and question the argument in the logic sense. Only by sayingsomething about the situation that Benton city is in can we consider more aboutthe prediction.
A healthy lifestyle should be pursued by all the residents in the city.But whether it is true that denizens in Benton City become healthier andslimmer still needs to be evaluated. The author has to scrutinize the argumentagain and answer many question asked by readers, otherwise, the argument is notpersuasive enough and we can easily turn the whole idea upside down. | 
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发表于 2013-3-5 15:42:20
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