#15 - Greatly exceeding the recommended daily intake of

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Must Be True. The correct answer choice is (B)

This stimulus presents a fact set, with no conclusion. The facts deal with the danger of exceeding the recommended daily intake of vitamins A and D. This is dangerous, because those vitamins can be toxic at high levels. Each “serving” of some vitamin-fortified foods already has 100 percent of the recommended daily intake of vitamins A and D. Unfortunately, “many people” eat more than the manufacture-defined serving of foods, like cereal, that are vitamin-fortified. In fact, these people eat two to three times more than the standard serving.

The stimulus tells us that this is a Must Be True question. The facts in this stimulus connect in more than one instance, giving us a strong prephrase. We know that the manufacturer-defined “servings” of some vitamin-fortified foods contain 100 percent of the daily recommended intake of vitamins A and D, and that many people eat two or three servings at a time. From the combination of these facts, we can infer that many people consume two or three times more Vitamin A and D than is recommended.

We also know that consuming more than the daily recommended amounts is dangerous, because these vitamins can be toxic at high levels. So, we know that the “many people” described in the stimulus are doing something dangerous by eating two or three times more than the defined “serving size.” Be careful not to take this idea too far, however. Although we know these vitamins can be toxic at high levels, we do not know how high those levels need to be before the danger is realized.

Answer choice (A): While many people overestimate the serving size, this does not necessarily mean that few people are aware of the daily recommended intake of vitamins A and D.

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice, because it restates—and modestly at that—our first inference from the stimulus.

Answer choice (C): The mistake attributed to people in the stimulus was the overestimation of the serving size, not a mistaken belief about whether it is healthy to consume more than the recommended daily intake of vitamins A and D.

Answer choice (D): The stimulus dealt only with vitamins A and D. This answer choice is too expansive, applying to all vitamins.

Answer choice (E): The stimulus does not provide any information about what manufacturers know.

[Leela]

My first instinct was to choose answer choice B, but I second guessed myself and chose A instead, not because I thought A was a good answer, but because I thought it was inappropriate to make the inference that's required to get to B. Is there a good rule of thumb for when inferences are okay in must be true questions?

[Brook Miscoski]

Leela,

There's no leap required to get to (B). The stimulus tells you that foods are fortified with the vitamins at 100% doses and that people eat several times the recommended allotment, meaning that they eat more than 100% of their doses. If you were concerned about the "some" in the passage leaving open a hole, you should still pick a choice like (B), the gist of the passage, over a choice like (A), a much bigger leap since awareness was never discussed.

[yrresnik]

This explanation by the administrator is wrong (And the response by brook which sounded condescending is wrong) mainly because on the test it’s a MOST SUPPORTED not an MBT (I only noticed this bc I was frustrated with the logic bc I as well assumed it was an mbt and noticed there was a logical leap).
There is a leap in logic here mainly because “some vitamin fortified foods that have 100% of your vitamin daily intake” which implies that some some vitamin fortified foods have less that the 100% percent daily intake maybe their fortified to only have 10% of your daily intake
People overestimate and have triple servings of some sort of vitamin fortified foods like cereal but maybe cerial is one of those vitamin fortified foods that is NOT fortified a 100% and only let’s say 10% a triple serving would amount to 30%
Not an overintake. That’s where the leap is and that’s why it’s a MOST SUPPORTED q not a MBT

[James Finch]

Hi yrresnik,

PowerScore categorizes Most Strongly Supported Questions as a subset of Must Be True questions, although the burden of proof is lower: likely to be true for MSS, 100% certainty for MBTs. Always be careful to check the question stem to see which of the two types it is.

Here, you're correct that there is an assumption required for this answer, as we only have the vague "some" and "many" to work with in the stimulus. While it's possible that there's no overlap between the fortified foods that contain 100% daily vitamins per serving and the foods that people tend to eat 2 or 3 servings of daily, it's likely that there's at least some overlap, even a single case. So it's likely that at least some people are eating more than the daily recommended amount of vitamins, just as (B) says.

Hope this helps!

[catatom]

[quote="Brook Miscoski"]Leela,

There's no leap required to get to (B). The stimulus tells you that foods are fortified with the vitamins at 100% doses and that people eat several times the recommended allotment, meaning that they eat more than 100% of their doses. If you were concerned about the "some" in the passage leaving open a hole, you should still pick a choice like (B), the gist of the passage, over a choice like (A), a much bigger leap since awareness was never discussed.[/quote

If "people overestimate what counts as a standard serving" wouldn't that mean that few people are aware of the recommended daily intake? Or if they were aware of the daily intake why would they overestimate what counts as a standard serving?

[Frank Peter]

Hi Catatom,

I think there is a disconnect here between the concepts of a standard serving vs. the recommended daily intake of certain vitamins. There's nothing in the passage to really suggest whether the people who are overestimating the serving size have any awareness or not of their recommended daily intake of vitamins. All we can really infer is that there are some people who are eating more than what the manufacturer considers a single serving, and may be getting more vitamins than recommended as a result.

[lavalsat]

I am confused on this one. The question states "for some vitamin- fortified foods, each serving as defined by the manufacturer, has 100 percent of the recommend daily intake of these vitamins".

Why is it that it wouldn't be appropriate to interpret this sentence as not knowing that they are ever referring to vitamins A or D? Why can't the "intake of these vitamins" refer to the vitamins mentioned earlier in the sentence ("for some vitamin-fortified foods")? To logically get to the right answer you have to assume that the words "these vitamins" referred specifically to vitamins A and D and I did not feel comfortable making that assumption based off of the english in the sentence. I feel like it is completely reasonable to not assume that "these vitamins" referred to vitamins A and D, and if that assumption is not made, answer B is only supported very weakly by an assumption.

[Adam Tyson]

It's actually not an assumption that "these vitamins" refers to vitamins A and D, lavalsat, but a rule of grammar. The only vitamins mentioned are A and D, and so thy MUST be the vitamins referred to. You're confusing "vitamin-fortified foods" with vitamins! If the reference had been to "these foods," you'd be right to question whether those foods have 100% of the RDA of vitamins A and D, but since the term "these vitamins" must, grammatically, refer back to the last vitamins that were mentioned, they must be referring to A and D.

(Disclaimer: I'm not an English teacher and barely remember the rules and terminology from those long-ago classes, so I can't remember if we are talking about "immediate antecedents" or "referrants" or some other jargon. But some English teacher could probably set us straight on that bit.)

[lavalsat]

Ah, yes I see where I confused the references there. Thanks Adam!