The following appeared in a health magazine."The citizens of Forsythe have adopted more healthful lifestyles. Their responses to a recent survey show that in their eating habits they conform more closely to government nutritional recommendations than they

The conclusion drawn by the writer is weak and lacks substantial proof. Quite a few number of arguments have been put forward by the author but there are many unwarranted assumptions and ambiguities in his reasoning regarding the healthful lifestyle adopted by citizens of Forsythe. Taken as a whole, these unstated assumptions render the argument highly suspect. Indeed, if these unstated assumptions do not hold true, then the argument totally falls apart.

First, the author has drawn a conclusion from a recent survey that Forsythe citizens eating habits conform more closely to government nutrition standards. But the author has to provide more details in order to support his stance. For instance, we do not know whether the survey was intended only to analyse the eating habits of Forsythe's citizens or whether it was a general survey. If it was a general survey, then the number of questions addressing this topic might be very less. And with that we cannot come into conclusions. Also, the way in which the survey was conducted was not mentioned. This is also an essential factor because surveys conducted by sending email to large number of people proves to be less effective because we do not know the authenticity of the response. Therefore the author has to mention all the details so as to support his argument.

Also, the author has compared the current survey with that of one that was taken ten years ago. There are many factors that play an important role in this and without addressing these one cannot come to a conclusion. One such factor is that he hasn't mentioned the number of people who participated in the survey and the total population of Forsythe. The author has to provide statistics of this for both current year and that of ten years ago. This is because population tend to increase or decrease over the time and the author's argument holds good only if the number of people participated in the survey and the population of Forsythe was same during both the years. There are chances that the population of Forsythe was less ten years ago and everyone participated in the survey, whereas the current population might have doubled and only half of them would have participated. Thus it is essential for the author to provide these details before he draws a conclusion.

Another important aspect is that the author has concluded that only because of the eating habits, the citizens of Forsythe have a healthful lifestyle. In order to support this, he has mentioned that there has been an increase in the consumption of products that has kiran and decrease in consumption of products that has suila. But there are chances that the citizens of Forsythe might have started doing physical exercise such as running, walking or might have joined gym so as to be healthy. Even these help people to lead a healthful lifestyle apart from the healthy diet. But the author did not mention any of these. Just because consumption of kiran has increased that does not necessarily mean that the person will be healthy. There can be instances where the person might consume such food but might not be physically active. This will surely affect his health. Therefore the author has to provide details apart from healthy diet so as to support his stance.

In conclusion, the argument makes number of unwarranted assumptions. Unless these assumptions are addressed and the above discussed points are taken into consideration, the entire argument falls apart.