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Food allergy

by faraz_jeddah » Thu Sep 12, 2013 2:49 pm
Although migraine headaches are believed to be caused by food allergies, putting patients on diets that eliminate those foods to which the patients have been demonstrated to have allergic migraine reactions frequently does not stop headaches. Obviously, some other cause of migraine headaches besides food allergies must exist.

edit: Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the conclusion above?

A - Many common foods elicit an allergic response only after several days, making it very difficult to observe links between specific foods patients eat and headaches they develop.

B - Food allergies affect many people who never develop the symptom of migraine headaches.

C - Many patients report that the foods that cause them migraine headaches are among the foods that they most enjoy eating.

D - Very few patients have allergic migraine reactions as children and then live migraine-free adult lives once they have eliminated from their diets foods to which they have been demonstrated to be allergic.

E - Very rarely do food allergies cause patients to suffer a symptom more severe than that of migraine headaches.

OA to be posted later.
Source - mba.com
Last edited by faraz_jeddah on Fri Sep 13, 2013 1:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by vinay1983 » Thu Sep 12, 2013 3:33 pm
I don't know what the question is but it is between A and E
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by [email protected] » Thu Sep 12, 2013 10:34 pm
Hi faraz_jeddah,

I'm not sure if you caught vinay1983's post, but this CR prompt does NOT have a question listed under the prompt. While it is possible to take a guess, even without the "question", I think it would be best if you edited in the missing question.

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by faraz_jeddah » Fri Sep 13, 2013 1:30 am
Sorry about that. Question has been added
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by vinay1983 » Fri Sep 13, 2013 2:04 am
Is it C then?
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by faraz_jeddah » Fri Sep 13, 2013 2:15 am
C is incorrect.

The conclusion of the stimulus is - There must be other causes besides the food allergy that cause headaches.
We are to weaken this conclusion by proving that Food allergies are indeed the cause!

To me D does this. If the migraines went away after the food was eliminated from the diet then this is proof that the food was the cause.

Yet, D is also incorrect.
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by ani781 » Fri Sep 13, 2013 4:33 am
Is it A ? It singles out a reason which strengthens the underlying cause as food only.. Thereby negating the 'other' reasons for the cause of migraine.
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by faraz_jeddah » Fri Sep 13, 2013 8:01 am
ani781 wrote:Is it A ? It singles out a reason which strengthens the underlying cause as food only.. Thereby negating the 'other' reasons for the cause of migraine.
OA is indeed A

However your logic is not clear to me.
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by theunheardmelody » Mon Sep 16, 2013 8:15 am
Im not sure why it is A. I also felt it was D (even though Children etc are not mentioned in the arguement). Can the experts help please :)
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by theCodeToGMAT » Mon Sep 16, 2013 9:17 am
[A] : Correct; indicates that the method used is non-trustworthy
: Incorrect...Out of scope; We are concerned only about migraine patients
[C] : Incorrect...Out of scope; it neither weakens nor strengthens.. Just a piece of FACT
[D] : Incorrect...Just a piece of Fact.
[E] : Incorrect...We are only concerned about Migraine.
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by Nitin.811g » Mon Sep 16, 2013 7:37 pm
[A]Seems Correct. Weakens the fact that the headaches could still be because of food.
Not Relevant in the context of the argument
[C]Not Relevant.
[D]Seemed complicated but not a very straightaway explanation that would weaken the conclusion
[E]Out of scope and

Hence iMO, OA should be A
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by theCodeToGMAT » Mon Sep 16, 2013 11:18 pm
The way I read [D] is .. Very Few [Hardly any] patients, who developed migrate in childhood, live migrate free adult lives once eliminating diet food ..
So, its actually strengthening the Conclusion.. ELIMINATE.

theunheardmelody wrote:Im not sure why it is A. I also felt it was D (even though Children etc are not mentioned in the arguement). Can the experts help please :)
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by lunarpower » Mon Sep 23, 2013 4:00 am
I received a private message regarding this problem.

The passage is very wordy. Slow down -- take the time to understand what it says. Ideally, be able to explain it in words that a ten-year-old would understand.

I had to read the red part here about six times before I could do that. (I'm dyslexic, so, for most other people, it's probably half that many times. But the point is that, no matter who you are, you'll probably have to read it more than once.)
faraz_jeddah wrote:Although migraine headaches are believed to be caused by food allergies, putting patients on diets that eliminate those foods to which the patients have been demonstrated to have allergic migraine reactions frequently does not stop headaches. Obviously, some other cause of migraine headaches besides food allergies must exist.
So. Many. Words.
But there's a hypothetical 10-year-old in front of me. He wants to know what it says. So I'll explain it to him.
* People think migraines come from what you eat.
* If you have migraines, they'll try putting you on a diet.
* In this diets, the foods that we KNOW you're allergic to are off limits.
* You might still get migraines.
* Therefore, some non-food thing is also an issue.

So yeah, look at that red thing again. That doesn't say "ALL the foods you're allergic to"; it says "the foods we KNOW you're allergic to".

Answer choices discussed below. (Sorry for the split post -- I'm posting on a tablet, and I want to make sure I don't lose the content I've typed. Also, super-long posts tend to be annoying.)
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by lunarpower » Mon Sep 23, 2013 4:02 am
A - Many common foods elicit an allergic response only after several days, making it very difficult to observe links between specific foods patients eat and headaches they develop.
When you read the green part -- more than once, if necessary -- you should come away from it with the following understanding: "It's likely that we won't catch all the foods that cause allergies".
That's the only reasonable way to interpret "difficult to observe".

This weakens the argument, because, in this case, it's very unlikely that the red part describes all of the allergy-causing foods. So it might just be the other foods -- the ones we didn't catch -- that are causing the problem.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by lunarpower » Mon Sep 23, 2013 4:02 am
Wrong choices:
B - Food allergies affect many people who never develop the symptom of migraine headaches.
We don't care about non-sufferers of migraines.
C - Many patients report that the foods that cause them migraine headaches are among the foods that they most enjoy eating.
Whether a patient likes certain foods is irrelevant to whether they are responsible for a disease.
D - Very few patients have allergic migraine reactions as children and then live migraine-free adult lives once they have eliminated from their diets foods to which they have been demonstrated to be allergic.
So many words!
I had to read this choice 3-4 times.

I'd explain it to a 10-year-old as "If you take people who've had migraines, and put them on these diets, then the diets often fail to take the migraines away."

This is not helpful, because it just restates something that we already know. The passage already tells us that this treatment protocol "frequently does not stop headaches", so we're just reiterating what's already there.
E - Very rarely do food allergies cause patients to suffer a symptom more severe than that of migraine headaches.
We don't care about any symptoms besides migraines.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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Pueden hacerle preguntas a Ron en castellano
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Voit esittää kysymyksiä Ron:lle myös suomeksi

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