Hi,
Following the nutrition board's advice on salt consumption would mean a virtual end of the use of salt in cooking, an avoidance of obviously salty foods, and reducing the reliance on processed foods that contain significant amounts of often hidden sodium.

Let us begin by understanding the meaning of this sentence.



Following the nutrition board's advice on salt consumption would mean:
a. a virtual end of the use of salt in cooking,
b. an avoidance of obviously salty foods, and
c. reducing the reliance on processed foods that contain significant amounts of often hidden sodium.



The sentence has a list with three elements. Although this list is logically parallel, the last entity is not grammatically parallel to the first two entities. The first two entities are noun phrases while the last entity begins with a verb-ing form (gerund). Hence, we have parallelism error here.

POE:

[email protected] wrote:(A) reducing the reliance on processed foods that contain significant amounts of often hidden sodium

Wrong as discussed.

[email protected] wrote:(B) reducing the reliance on processed foods containing often hidden but significant amounts of sodium

Wrong. Same error as in A.

[email protected] wrote:(C) a reduction of the reliance on processed foods, containing as they do often hidden sodium in significant amounts

Wrong.
a. "a reduction of the reliance" is unidiomatic.
b. Use of comma before "containing" is incorrect. The verb-ing modifier "containing" does not modify processed food anymore making the entire sentence ungrammatical.
c. "as they do" is unnecessary.

[email protected] wrote:(D) a reduced reliance on the significant amounts of hidden sodium often contained in processed foods

Wrong. Although this sentence is grammatically correct, it distorts the intended meaning of the sentence. The sentence now means that following the nutrition board's advice would mean a reduced reliance on the significant amounts of sodium rather than processed food.

[email protected] wrote:(E) a reduced reliance on processed foods that contain significant but often hidden amounts of sodium

Correct answer. The third entity is now a noun phrase which is grammatically parallel to the other two entities in the sentence.


1. Identify the correct list in the sentence.
2. All the entities in the list must be grammatically as well as logically parallel to each other.
3. Avoid answer choices that distort the intended meaning of the sentence.
4. Do not use unidiomatic and unnecessary expressions.
5. Pay attention to the comma as their presence and/or absence can change the meaning of the sentence by changing the function of the modifiers.

The concepts tested in this sentence have been covered in e-gmat concepts:
1. Level 1 - Parallelism - Identify and Correct
2. Level 1 - Parallelism - Helpful Tips
3. Level 1 - Modifiers - Verb-ing ((This concept features in Preview Level 1 Concepts available in Free Trial. Just register and learn the concept.)

Thanks.
Shraddha