GRE exercise2

Essay topics: “In general, people are not as concerned as they were a decade ago about regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses. Walk into the Heart's Delight, a store that started selling organic fruits and vegetables and whole-grain flours in the 1960's, and you will also find a wide selection of cheeses made with high butterfat content. Next door, the owners of the Good Earth Cafe, an old vegetarian restaurant, are still making a modest living, but the owners of the new House of Beef across the street are millionaires.”

A Balanced Diet is Still Popular

In this argument, the author asserts that people in general are not as concerned as they were a decade ago about regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses. To solidify the conclusion, the author cited the fact that various high-fat chesses are available in a long-established store, the Heart’s Delight, which specializes in organic fruit and vegetables and whole grains. The author also points out that the old vegetarian restaurant is still making a modest living while the new House of Beef pulls in millions of dollars. However, the argument is severely weakened by three critical flaws on the representation of a single store, the causes of financial conditions and the reason behind people’s choice of restaurants.

Most conspicuously, it’s unconvincing to draw the conclusion from insufficient evidence of the emergence of cheese in one fruit-and-vegetable-selling store. The change of commodities in a single store can hardly represent the entire market and chances are that it is just accidental event. For example, maybe more and more blue-collars or athletes move into the neighborhood and consequently raised the demand for high-calorie food such as cheese. Statistics shows that there were more than 300000 food stores in the US, but without referring to further data, the author unreasonably generalized all the other restaurants with one sample, which may be an exception from the normal circumstances.

In addition, the author commits the fallacy of casual relationship between the financial condition of restaurant and the concern of people on their diet. The depression of the vegetarian restaurant may not necessarily arise from the lack of concern with diet. Perhaps the vegetarian restaurant suffers from poor management, or a few new vegetarian restaurants start occupying the shares of the local market. Similarly, the booming of new House of Beef may be caused by other reasons such as adequate financial support or tasty-but-cheap food. However, the author indiscreetly neglects other possibilities that may lead to the current financial conditions. 

What’s more, the assumption that food served in restaurants can accurately reflect concern on intake of red meat and fatty cheese is gratuitous. An online survey conducted by Yahoo in 2013 revealed that more than 70% Americans ear more times at home than at restaurants and in these cases, eating outside sometimes means treating themselves to a big meal. So they are more likely to choose the House of Beef to enjoy the fine-cooked beef rather than the everyday tomatoes and potatoes. So even if the House of Beef sells more, one can almost deduce nothing from the food served at restaurants, which can’t reflect people’s concerns accurately.

In summary, the conclusion that people are less concerned about monitoring their intake of red meat and fatty cheese is invalid and misleading. More specific evidence should be provided on the changes of goods in other stores, the indeed cause of the different financial condition and what people really eat in most of their time.