Sentence Correction

Dental caries and gingivitis can be exacerbated not only by the foods patients eat but
also by when the patients eat them.
(A) not only by the foods patients eat but also by when the patients eat them
(B) by not only the foods patients eat but also by when the patients eat them
(C) not only by the foods patients eat but also by time when the foods are eaten
(D) by not only the foods that are eaten by patients but also by the times the foods are
eaten
(E) not only by what patients eat but also by when they eat it

OA: E

What does it refer to? I picked C only because of 'it' issue in E

In E, 'it' refers to 'what', or more fully to 'what patients eat'. C is incorrect because the noun 'time' lacks a definite article. Had C said 'the time', it would be fine.

Ilana@MasterGMAT wrote:In E, 'it' refers to 'what', or more fully to 'what patients eat'.

I thought this is not as good as having a proper antecedent for 'it'.
Can you provide more sentences with these type of antencedents. I am not quite familiar with them.

.....
I'd rather go for D. As, not only the parallelism is respected but also the meaning is clear. though this is the longest choice, I feel this is the only one which is correct.
What is the OA?
In choice 'E': "can be exacerbated..(skipped the middleman)..by when they eat it(refers to ? 'what patients eat'{could be singular or plural} --> whatever in place of what would have gone fit for S-V agreement )". The antecedent of it seems vague to me.

OA is E.

I have posted a PM to Ron on this link.
Lets wait to hear from the expert.

I chose E

I feel, that in answ choice A the comparison is worse than in E.

(A) not only by the foods patients eat but also by when the patients eat them
(E) not only by what patients eat but also by when they eat it

in A "by the food" is compared with "by when". in E everything sounds better (by what/by when)

in A also "them" is ok by the meaning, but is it ok grammatically? we have two words in plural-"the foods" and "the patients".so, is the word "them" has a proper antecedent?
in E again everything sounds better. every word has its own antecedent (it=what; patients=they)
also in answ choice (A) I didnt get why the word "patients" has no article first, but later it suddenly has it.

Hi Ron,
Thank you for pitching in so quickly.
This is 238th Prob of 1000SC.

lunarpower wrote:also, i don't see any problems with choice (a). if the source has an answer key, i'd be interested in seeing its justification for marking (a) wrong.

Can you pl. explain how parallelism is maintained in 'A' ?

(A) and (E) are correct