LSAT 154 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q24

LR Question 24 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Nuts are high in calories. All else being equal…

QUESTION TYPE: Paradox

PARADOX: Nuts have high calories, and eating many calories makes you overweight. But people who eat nuts often tend to be less overweight.

ANALYSIS: The key phrase is “other things equal”. Clearly, all things are not equal and some other factor distinguishes nut eaters. You can use common experience to prephrase a few possibilities:

• Nuts are very filling, so people aren’t hungry enough to eat a lot of them
• People eat nuts regularly, but only in small quantities
• People who eat nuts tend to be health conscious, and watch their weight in other ways

None of these have to be true. They’re just the sort of thing I expect I might find in the answers. Doing this exercise beforehand can help you avoid traps. It should be a 5-10 second process, just ask your brain for its thoughts on nuts and how they can lead to being fit.

Note that you still have to watch for traps when prephrasing. B seems to say nuts are filling, but actually is says nuts will eventually fill you up. But any food will eventually fill you up if you eat enough. Whereas E is actually the answer matching the idea behind the prephrases above: eat enough nuts and you will avoid foods that cause you to be hungry, which should reduce the total amount you eat.

So, prephrasing is still useful, but on hard questions you should at scan all of the answers after finding a potential match: LSAC is now laying traps for prephrasers.

___________

1. This is true, which may make it tempting. But you’re not looking for something merely true. You’re looking for an explanation, and this explains nothing. This answer doesn’t link eating nuts to actually exercising a lot.
2. This is a trap answer. I had rephrased “oh maybe nuts are more filling than most foods”. I thought this answer said that, but it doesn’t. It just says “eat enough nuts and you’ll feel full”. That’s very different.
    
   Eat enough ice cream and you’ll feel full too, but ice cream isn’t very filling in proportion to its calories!
3. This tells us what people should do, which is a moral question. Whereas the stimulus was about a factual situation, what people do do. Fact and morality never mix on the LSAT.
    
   In any case, this moral statement doesn’t explain why nuts don’t lead to weight gain. It merely tells us not to avoid them.
4. This explains why people who eat nuts aren’t gaining weight: they eat the same amount of calories as those who don’t eat nuts. But, it doesn’t explain why they eat the same amount of calories. After all, they eat nuts, which are high in calories. Further, this answer is confusing: if people who eat nuts eat the same amount of calories as those who don’t, why are those who eat nuts less overweight.

5. CORRECT. This is abstractly worded, but basically it means this. The brackets describe a food’s effect on hunger:

   1. Imagine you eat apples (normal), meat (normal) and ice cream (makes you hungry)
   2. Then, you start eating nuts (normal effect on hunger)
   3. The nuts replace another food. This answer says they replace the food that makes you hungry. In this case, ice cream.

   So, you go from eating “apples (normal), meat (normal), ice cream (makes you hungry)” to “apples (normal), meat (normal), nuts (normal)”. The nuts have replaced a food that makes you hungry, so you’re less hungry and eat fewer total calories.

Recap: The question begins with “Nuts are high in calories All else being equal”. It is a Paradox question. Learn more about LSAT Paradox questions in our guide to LSAT Logical Reasoning question types.