PT4.S4.Q06 - lourdes: dietary fiber is an important part

Seriousbird

I chose B because I thought it weakened the argument showing that it does not matter the amount a person digesting the fiber thus weakening Kyra's claim.

Can someone explain A and B to me?
C) being economical and readily available does not affect Kyra's argument and thus is irrelevant, we only care about how absorption affects mineral absorption
D) calcium intake is discussing new information, bone mass and osteoporosis is irrelevant because it's not even discussed about in the argument/recommendation
E) Strengthens. People are getting fiber from other places which supports Kyra's claim that with the amount recommended people would be more likely to have fiber that is significantly above the recommended intake and affect mineral absorption

runiggyrun

Kyra's argument boils down to : Too much fiber is bad. You should eat less fiber than you are currently eating.
The weakening statement would be "but I'm not currently eating too much fiber. In fact, I'm not even eating enough fiber!".
That's what answer A says.

Long version:
We have two premises:
Recommended amount of fiber is 20-35g/day (from Lourdes's statement)
Fiber intake that's significantly above the recommended amount is bad for you (Kyra's premise).
Kyra's conclusion: people should be told to cut down on their fiber intake (eat less fiber than they are currently eating).
The big flaw in this argument is that we don't know that people's current intake is "significantly above the recommended intake". Kyra assumes that it is, that's why she thinks it should be reduced, but we don't actually know from the stimulus.
Answer A perfectly addresses that by filling in that missing information - if adults only eat ~10 g/day, which is less than half of the recommended amount, they are very far from the high levels that would be dangerous, so they shouldn't reduce their intake.
Answers B, C and E are similarly irrelevant to the argument. The argument talks about fiber intake specifically, not about how much fiber is in different types of food, how available fiber is and how delicious it tastes. Kyra's not saying you should eat less bread and more steak - just eat less fiber, however you do it!

Seriousbird

thank you so much for your comment, I understand why A is correct now but I'm still a little confused on B and E.

For B, I thought it weakened her recommendation because regardless of fiber intake it says with an increase of food processing then fiber is broken down resulting in a lower fiber content. I thought this destroyed/significantly weakened Kyra's claim. If fiber intake is going to be broken down and lower then it doesn't matter if an individual is taking more than the required amount, or am I making an unwarranted assumption here?

Also for E wouldn't you say it strengthens her claim? If excellent sources of fiber are popular with consumers then it might be better to cut back on fiber intake. The other reason I could see this as wrong is because the answer choice doesn't state how much fiber the consumers are taking so even if food with fiber is popular, it does nothing if we don't know the amount of fiber people have. This problem leads us to A, right?

runiggyrun

For B I take "the more food is processed" to mean "the more food is processed by the manufacturer" rather than "processed by the body". Highly processed foods like white bread, white pasta, and so on have very little fiber left and it would be hard to get a lot of fiber eating them. So an increase in the amount of food is not increasing the amount of fiber, but it's not weakening her claim because she talks directly about fiber intake, not intake of fiber containing food. If Kyra was saying "you should stop eating bread so you would eat less fiber", then B would weaken, because B would say "but there's barely any fiber in bread, so I don't need to stop eating it".
I can see how if you interpret "processed" to be "processed by the body" B would be attractive (like you can have a ton of extra vitamin C, because everything you don't use gets destroyed, so it's hard to overdose on vitamin C). I just think they rely on the common meaning of "processed food" and if it was the alternative meaning they would have made it more clear (like say "digested" instead of "processed")
For E I can see why that could be seen as a mild strengthen - if beer and hotdogs were full of fiber maybe the average person should start watching their intake of fiber. I say it would only mildly strengthen because "popular" doesn't necessarily mean "eaten in great amounts". Could mean "eaten in small amounts by a lot of different people".
This is a bit long and rambly, but I hope it makes sense

Seriousbird

No this is exactly what I needed, thank you so much! I understand now, and your right digested would have referenced the body but processed refers to processed foods.

Thanks!!