Argument 53/144/151 Arg 53healthful lifestyles manifested in food sales
53) The following appeared in a health magazine.
The citizens of Forsythe have adopted more healthful lifestyles. Their responses to a recent survey show that in their eating habits they conform more closely to government nutritional recommendations than they did ten years ago. Furthermore, there has been a fourfold increase in sales of food products containing kiran, a substance that a scientific study has shown reduces cholesterol. This trend is also evident in reduced sales of sulia, a food that few of the most healthy citizens regularly eat.
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
144) The citizens of Forsythe have adopted more healthful lifestyles. Their responses to a recent survey show that in their eating habits they conform more closely to government nutritional recommendations than they did ten years ago. Furthermore, there has been a fourfold increase in sales of food products containing kiran, a substance that a scientific study has shown reduces cholesterol. This trend is also evident in reduced sales of sulia, a food that few of the healthiest citizens regularly eat.
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
151) Benton City residents have adopted healthier lifestyles. A recent survey of city residents shows that the eating habits of city residents conform more closely to government nutritional recommendations than they did ten years ago. During those ten years, local sales of food products containing kiran, a substance that a scientific study has shown reduces cholesterol, have increased fourfold, while sales of sulia, a food rarely eaten by the healthiest residents, have declined dramatically. Because of these positive changes in the eating habits of Benton City residents, we predict that the obesity rate in the city will soon be well below the national average.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the prediction and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.
C1:The citizens of Forsythe have adopted more healthful lifestyles.
G1: Their responses to a recent survey show that in their eating habits they conform more closely to government nutritional recommendations than they did ten years ago.
G2: Furthermore, there has been a fourfold increase in sales of food products containing kiran, a substance that a scientific study has shown reduces cholesterol.
G3:This trend is also evident in reduced sales of sulia, a food that few of the most healthy citizens regularly eat.
A1(G1,C1): The survey result accurately reflect the lifestyles of the citizens.
A2(G2,C1): The increase in the sales of the food products that contain Kiran implies that more people live more healthful lives.
A3(G3,C1): The reduced sales of sulia are a result of more healthful lifestyles adopted by Forsythe citizens.
this argument consists of three parallel grounds and one claim(G1,G2,G3)C1
The article makes the argument that Forsythe citizens lifestyles have become more healthful based on a recent survey and sales records of two types of food. To evaluate this optimistic conclusion, we need more evidence about how the survey was designed and conducted and the reasons why the sales of different food have changed.
We need more information about the survey to decide if the results can support the conclusion. For one thing, how the survey was designed and conducted would affect the reliability of the data collected. Did the survey ask the respondents about their eating habits now as well as ten years ago? For their current eating habits, did the survey designers include questions phrased in different ways to check the consistency of the respondents? For the eating habits of people ten years ago, did the survey ask the respondents to recall their eating habits or consider the data collected a decade earlier? Answers to these questions would provide evidence for us to decide if the survey itself was well-designed and could produce useful and reliable data. Another issue is the representativeness of the respondents. We need to evaluate the sampling methods of the survey critically to see if the respondents sampled can truly represent the Forsythe citizens. If the respondents were mainly from a particular socioeconomic class or age group, for example, the survey results could not be generalzed to the entire population in Forsythe.
More information is also required to understand the nature of Kiran and the reasons why the sales have increased. According to the magazine article, Kiran can help reduce cholesterol. But that does not mean the substance is necessarily healthful. Maybe it is a mood booster that can help the people to feel good but may become addictive in the long term. We need more information about Kiran to determine whether having more of this is healthful. Also, we need to consider the food products that contain kiran. Maybe the food products, in addition to having kiran, also have other unhealthy ingredients such as sugar or grease. This is related to another question: why are the food products so popular? Maybe they are popular for reasons unrelated to kiran such as the delicious taste as a result of sugar or grease or effective marketing strategies of the manufacturers and retailers. If this is the case, the data would not support the claim that Forsythe citizens are leading a more healthful life.
Similarly, we need more information about sulia and why its sales has been reduced. It is not reasonable to assess the health value of sulia simply based on the eating habits of the most healthy citizens. The citizenss health conditions may or may not relate to their habits of eating or not eating a particular food. We need more data about why the most healthy citizens are so healthy to decide if it is related to not eating sulia. Of course, information about sulia itself such as its nutrition value and impact on peoples health would be very helpful. Meanwhile, it is also useful to know why the sales of sulia has declined. It could be caused by factors that are completely unrelated to peoples lifestyle and health, Maybe the sales were reduced because the change of global market that increased the price of sulia as raw materials. With the increase of the price, people would certainly buy less of the food. If this is the case, we would then need to consider the substitute of sulia that people turn to and see if the substitute is healthful or not.
Overall speaking, evaluating the healthfulness of peoples lifestyles is an important but complcated undertaking. Looking at the eating habits and the sales of particular food products is helpful but may not lead to comprehensive and reliable data that is required to make any valid conclusion. To evaluate the argument, we need more information about the survey designs, the nature of the food products and why the sales have changed.
