LSAT 156 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q10

LR Question 10 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Medical researcher: Studies in North America have shown that …

QUESTION TYPE: Paradox

PARADOX: High fat consumption is linked to heart disease, but France has high fat consumption and low heart disease.

ANALYSIS: Right now, French people are consuming as much fat as Americans. Right now, they have half the rate of heart disease.

If I were relatively healthy my entire life, and then recently began eating McDonald’s every day, would I immediately become obese? No.

Unhealthy consumption takes time to develop into disease. So even if France currently has high fat consumption, that might not have been true long enough to show up in heart disease rates yet.

That would explain the paradox: the cause (high fat) is there now, but the effect (heart disease) hasn’t caught up yet.

___________

1. If fat consumption has been falling, we’d expect lower heart disease, which doesn’t resolve the paradox.
2. We don’t care about other dietary factors.
3. CORRECT. If fat consumption only recently increased, there hasn’t been enough time for heart disease to develop.
4. We don’t care about other diseases either.
5. This makes the paradox worse. More smoking should mean more heart disease, not less.