Q9 - It would benefit public health

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
ID the Conclusion

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: It would benefit public health if junk food were taxed.
Evidence: Eating too much junk food contributes to many health problems. If it were more expensive (taxed) than healthy food, people would switch to healthier food, which would reduce these problems.

Answer Anticipation:
The two most common places to find the Conclusion on an ID the Conclusion question are
1. Attached to some but/yet/however rebuttal
or
2. The first sentence. If the first sentence sounds like a 1st-person opinion, read on anticipating that the author will be trying to support that idea. If you can tell that the author is supporting the first sentence, then you can quickly confirm your suspicion.

Correct Answer:
A

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Yes! First sentence.

(B) Premise

(C) Premise

(D) Never said, kinda implied, not the first sentence.

(E) Tricky! But the conclusion was "if junk food taxed, it would ben public health", and this says the conclusion was "if taxing would benefit public health, we should do it."

Takeaway/Pattern: This comes down to (A) vs. (E), as long as we correctly recognized the 1st sentence as the conclusion. At that point, we can't be duped by the "word match" in (E). We need to look for the "meaning match", which we get with (A).

#officialexplanation

[WaltGrace1983]

Proportion of junk food contributes to many health problems
+
If junk food were more expensive, people would make dietary changes
→
It would benefit public health if junk food were taxed

(A) is the answer.

(B) is a premise.
(C) is a premise.
(D) is a slight alteration of the 2nd premise.
(E) is a misrepresentation of the conclusion - we don't need "should" and it has the necessary/sufficient conditions mixed up.