GMAT Essays (AWA)

Open to suggestions and critique.

Prompt:

"In general, people are not as concerned as they were a decade about regulating their intake red meat and fatty cheeses.

Walk into the Heart's Delight, a store that started selling organic fruits and vegetables and whole-grain flours in the 1960's, and you will also find a wide selection of cheeses made with high butterfat content. Next door, the owners of the Good Earth Café, an old vegetarian restaurant, are still making a modest living, but the owners of the new House Of Beef the street are millionaires."

The argument states that people nowadays are less worried about limiting their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses than they were a decade ago.

While this might be true, making such conclusion on the basis of only two restaurants is wrong. Just because the vegetarian restaurant in the passage is doing not as well as House of Beef across the street does not mean that people love beef and hate vegetables. The difference may have to do with many things. For example, the vegetarian restaurant owners may not be as aggressive in their marketing as the owners of the posh House of Beef and may actually be content with making a "modest living," as the passage states.

Similarly, to conclude that people consume more high-fat dairy, we are lacking data on how well these products sell at the Heart's Delight; instead we are simply presented with the evidence that they are there. It may be that they are bought, for instance, only for special occasions (fondue, anyone?) or that the demand for low-fat brands is higher than that for the hearty, high-fat ones. The evidence presented in the passage is insufficient to make an adequate conclusion.

We also don't know the geographic location and demographics of the people in question. If that evidence were presented, it may turn out that people in this particular town or state are more fond of their red meats and cheeses for whatever reason or that they hold certain diet beliefs that promote high fat consumption. Examples of such diets that come to mind include Paleo or Atkins diets. The followers of these meal plans believe that fats found in meats, dairy and eggs - especially of the organic kind - foster good health and vitality.

The argument could be strengthened by including the consumption information on each product by decade and comparing it with the intake of fruits and vegetables. This study could be supplemented by conducting interviews with the subjects to access their food preferences and the reasons behind any changes that might have occurred over time.