PT37.S2.Q12 - one cannot prepare a good meal from bad food

dchoi121

http://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-37-section-2-question-12/

This is a MBT question.
I translated the stimulus into:
Prepare good meal-->good food-->good soil-->good farming--->good cultural values

A.The creation of...
E. When food is bad...

I am having trouble with Answer choice E. I translated E into the contrapositive of bad farming--->bad soil--->bad food..It seems pretty correct to me unless food is bad is not the conclusion.

Angelica Pickles

Hi Divon,
You mean PT37, right?

I translated the stimulus like you did, but be careful with E).
The only thing we can logically conclude when food is bad is that we're not going to have a good meal
/Good food --> /good meal

E) is trying to get you to conclude a sufficient from satisfying a necessary condition. All we know is that bad farming practices & poor soil are sufficient conditions for bad food but just because we have bad food doesn't mean it was necessarily because of bad farming practices or poor soil. I was at the farmer's market yesterday, and the swiss chard I was looking at came from good soil and good farming practices. But thankfully I noticed before I bought it that it was bad (pests had eaten out the stems).

A) is correct because if we have a good meal, we can conclude good soil (=natural) and cultural conditions. And if we don't have good natural and cultural conditions we can conclude
/Good Meal.