ARGUMENT88 古人的食谱

TMACJAMESUID: 2836445

TOPIC: ARGUMENT88 - The following appeared in a newsletter about health published in the country of Sauria.

"According to Sauria's leading nutritional experts, a diet high in complex carbohydrates, and low in fat is optimal for good health and longevity. Because this was the diet of the people who lived in ancient Sauria, one would expect them to have had long and healthy lives. Yet the mummified remains of Sauria's ruling classes from two to three thousand years ago show the existence of many medical problems among the ancient Saurians, including dental problems, elevated blood pressure, obesity, heart disease, and early mortality. Clearly, the diet of the ancient Saurians was responsible for these problems. The high incidence of high blood pressure, obesity, and heart disease in Sauria today even among those who have tried low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets further proves that Sauria's leading nutritional experts are wrong."
WORDS: 495
TIME: 00:26:09
DATE: 9/3/2010 11:52:33 AM

The author draw the conclusion about the error of those nutritional experts that their advocating diets are not healthy at all with the evidence of the remains of ancient Sauria's ruling class and the health problems in Sauria today. Ostensibly cogent as it may seem, I cannot help noticing that there are several fallacies and possibilities the author left out.

Firstly, the question about the recommended diet entails much further investigation than what the author has presented. Is it really meaningless? The author has not responded with straight answer, but by oblique evidence of mummified remains of those ancient ruling classes two or three thousand years ago. From the view of statistics, such proof lacks significance because it is mainly based on the remains of ruling classes. For one possibility, those ruling classes shared a different diet other than those ordinary Sauria people due to their positions. Another explanation is that there are many other remains of healthy Sauria people which have not been found. Either way, the current evidence cannot support the author's conclusion strongly.

Plus, the efficiency of the recommended diet should be put under examination of modern techniques, not only relying on what the ancient people recorded. As we know, the social condition has varied a lot from ancient to modern that to those ancient Sauria people, even though they managed to come up with the diet, they could not follow it for lacking of resource. In addition, the author fails to prove that the discoveried ancient people had strictly adhered to the diet while still ended up with those symptoms. Thus historically speaking, the author's evidence cannot stand either.

Furthermore, about the evidence of high incidence of those health problems today in Sauria, the author has not provided direct correlation between the diet and diseases. The author only mentions that there are people who undertake the diet found with those health problems. However, the author neither supplied the proportion nor the exact number of those people to see how serious the situation is. If there is only a slight percentage among those diet-taken people to have diseases, or few in number, then it cannot deny the value of the diet for the function of diet is merely conducive to a healthy life, but it is not drug or elixir that could deal with everything. If some of those people follow the diet while keep other unhealthy habits like smoking, then by using the diet cannot prevent them from those diseases. Thereby, the author only mentions the situation without further elucidating it.

All in all, the author makes a superficially tenable and well-organized argument suggesting the meaningless of the recommended diet, but fails to substantiate any of the evidences he came up with. Therefore, the general conclusion about the diet is precarious and unpersuasive. If the author still strives to prove his conclusion, then he has to firstly respond to all those qualms I raised above and dig further on the issue.