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Using and vs or

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Using and vs or

by cbenk121 » Tue Oct 06, 2009 1:25 pm
The commission has directed advertisers to restrict the use of the word "natural" to foods that do not contain color or flavor additives, chemical preservatives, or nothing that has been synthesized.

A) or nothing that has been
B) or that has been
C) and nothing that is
D) or anything that has been
E) and anything

[spoiler]OA: D[/spoiler]

[spoiler]My question is why is OR the logical choice? In order to be labeled natural, the food needs to not contain ALL of those items, not simply one of them. However, I do understand so much on the grounds that original sentence meant to use "or", so using and changes the meaning.[/spoiler]
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by cbenk121 » Wed Oct 07, 2009 8:58 pm
Bump, don't tell me this is too hard!
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by punitkaur » Thu Oct 15, 2009 2:55 am
I had the same question and was looking for discussions on this forum. couldnt find any answers.
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by punitkaur » Thu Oct 15, 2009 3:00 am
ok after some thinking, :P i tried to relate this to the mathematical "and"/"or" we use in sets.

So lets say, a mixture should not contain A,B and C.

what this means it DEFINITELY DOES NOT contain all of them together. However, it COULD contain A alone or B alone or C alone. or combinations of AB,BC, CA. since nothing is being said about these explicitly, usage of AND will distort the meaning.

But if you use A or B or C, then the mixture WILL definitely not contain either of those and also "all of those", which was the intention of the original sentence. So if we used and instead of or, it changes the meaning being conveyed.

Try to apply this logic to the problem and see if it makes sense now. To me it does :) Thats why the OG says it distorts the meaning..
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by cbenk121 » Mon Oct 19, 2009 5:44 pm
punitkaur wrote:ok after some thinking, :P i tried to relate this to the mathematical "and"/"or" we use in sets.

So lets say, a mixture should not contain A,B and C.

what this means it DEFINITELY DOES NOT contain all of them together. However, it COULD contain A alone or B alone or C alone. or combinations of AB,BC, CA. since nothing is being said about these explicitly, usage of AND will distort the meaning.

But if you use A or B or C, then the mixture WILL definitely not contain either of those and also "all of those", which was the intention of the original sentence. So if we used and instead of or, it changes the meaning being conveyed.

Try to apply this logic to the problem and see if it makes sense now. To me it does :) Thats why the OG says it distorts the meaning..
Make sense, thanks!
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