Which of the following most logically completes the argument

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Which of the following most logically completes the argument given below?
People in isolated rain-forest communities tend to live on a largely vegetarian diet, and they eat little salt. Few of them suffer from high blood pressure, and their blood pressure does not tend to increase with age, as is common in industrialized countries. Such people often do develop high blood pressure when they move to cities and adopt high-salt diets. Though suggestive, these facts do not establish salt as the culprit in high blood pressure, however, because ____________

(A) genetic factors could account for the lack of increase of blood pressure with age among such people
(B) people eating high-salt diets and living from birth in cities in industrialized societies generally have a tendency to have high blood pressure
(C) it is possible to have a low-salt diet while living in a city in an industrialized country
(D) there are changes in other aspects of diet when such people move to the city
(E) salt is a necessity for human life, and death can occur when the body loses too much salt

I'm confused with options B and C. Experts need help?

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by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Sun Oct 29, 2017 1:03 pm
ardz24 wrote:Which of the following most logically completes the argument given below?
People in isolated rain-forest communities tend to live on a largely vegetarian diet, and they eat little salt. Few of them suffer from high blood pressure, and their blood pressure does not tend to increase with age, as is common in industrialized countries. Such people often do develop high blood pressure when they move to cities and adopt high-salt diets. Though suggestive, these facts do not establish salt as the culprit in high blood pressure, however, because ____________

(A) genetic factors could account for the lack of increase of blood pressure with age among such people
(B) people eating high-salt diets and living from birth in cities in industrialized societies generally have a tendency to have high blood pressure
(C) it is possible to have a low-salt diet while living in a city in an industrialized country
(D) there are changes in other aspects of diet when such people move to the city
(E) salt is a necessity for human life, and death can occur when the body loses too much salt

I'm confused with options B and C. Experts need help?
Conclusion: salt not necessarily culprit for high blood pressure
Premises: people in rain-forest communities eat low-salt diet, don't have high blood pressure. When they move to cities and eat high salt diets, they develop high blood pressure.

This is a causal argument. We're trying to debunk this claim: high salt ----> high blood pressure. Typically, causal arguments will be debunked in one of two ways: 1) there is a different underlying cause for a given outcome or 2)cause and effect are reversed. It doesn't really make sense to argue that cause and effect are reversed here, so we're looking for an alternative cause that may have prompted the increase in blood pressure experienced by those who move from a rain forest community to a city. This is what D alludes to. If other dietary variables have changed, perhaps it isn't salt that's the culprit. Maybe it's something else. (Fat? Sugar? Who knows?)
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