Milk and dairy products are rich in vitamin D and calcium—substances essential for building and maintaining bones. Many people therefore say that a diet rich in dairy products can help prevent osteoporosis, a disease that is linked to both environmental and genetic factors and that causes the bones to weaken significantly with age. But a long-term study of a large number of people found that those who consistently consumed dairy products throughout the years of the study have a higher rate of bone fractures than any other participants in the study. Since bone fractures are symptomatic of osteoporosis, this study result shows that a diet rich in dairy products may actually increase, rather than decrease, the risk of osteoporosis.
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The author of the argument is skeptical about the opinion that a dairy diet that is rich in calcium and vitamin D is effective in decreasing the risk of osteoporosis. He bases his conclusion on the results of the study that has showed that people who consumed more dairy products experienced higher rate of fractures considered to be a symptom of the disease. I find the author’s conclusion not convincing enough as it is based on several crucial assumptions.
First of all, the author assumes that while dairy products contain a lot of calcium and vitamin D there may not be other elements that may increase the risk of osteoporosis. Consider for instance that dairy products with a high content of fats are harmful for people who are likely to develop osteoporosis. In this case, the advantages of consuming large amounts of necessary vitamins and minerals that a dairy diet is rich of may be well outweighed by the disadvantages of high level of fats that some dairy products usually contain. On the other hand, those dairy goods that are low in fats may still be healthy and effectively decrease the risk of osteoporosis. If the author had provided the evidence that there were no harmful elements in dairy food that the participants of the study consumed, his or her argument would have been more plausible.
Another crucial assumption the argument is based on is that the study the author mentions was carried out with duly diligence. Can one be sure that treated and controlled groups were chosen properly. It is reasonable to assume that those people who consumed less dairy products lived in the areas where environment is better from the perspective of developing the disease. If this is true, it is wrong to claim that a dairy diet was responsible to the increase in the risk of osteoporosis. Probably, such a difference between two groups is explained by other conditions. If there had been evidence that the results of the study are reliable, the conclusion driven by the author would have been more credible.
Finally, it may be that a dairy diet is only harmful when one consumes milk and dairy products in extremely large amounts. Indeed, they often say that everything is good in limited amounts. Can it be that those people who experienced the increase in the risk of osteoporosis consumed too much of milk? Is it possible that a dairy diet is healthy up to some extent? All these questions need to be answered before one can judge how plausible the author’s conclusions are.
Thus, the author’s argument does not seem convincing. There is lack of evidence to exclude other possible reasons why people who consumed more dairy products experienced a higher risk of developing the disease. The argument could have been strengthened if the author had provided supportive evidence that the dairy products consumed by the participants of the study did not contained some harmful elements, that the results of the study are not spurious and that those who consumed more milk did it in reasonable amounts.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 513 350
No. of Characters: 2467 1500
No. of Different Words: 206 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.759 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.809 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.664 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 164 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 139 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 100 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 50 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.318 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.938 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.455 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.336 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.508 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.074 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 380, Rule ID: DID_BASEFORM[1]
Message: The verb 'did' requires the base form of the verb: 'contain'
Suggestion: contain
...y the participants of the study did not contained some harmful elements, that the results...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, first, if, may, so, still, then, thus, well, while, for instance, first of all, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 39.0 19.6327345309 199% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 32.0 13.6137724551 235% => Less relative clauses wanted (maybe 'which' is over used).
Pronoun: 44.0 28.8173652695 153% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 60.0 55.5748502994 108% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2533.0 2260.96107784 112% => OK
No of words: 513.0 441.139720559 116% => OK
Chars per words: 4.93762183236 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.75914943092 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.80111600763 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 207.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.40350877193 0.468620217663 86% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 807.3 705.55239521 114% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 58.3800599945 57.8364921388 101% => OK
Chars per sentence: 115.136363636 119.503703932 96% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.3181818182 23.324526521 100% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.81818181818 5.70786347227 84% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.256904765696 0.218282227539 118% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.086331109252 0.0743258471296 116% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0732857384143 0.0701772020484 104% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.166250859616 0.128457276422 129% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0547845896084 0.0628817314937 87% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.5 14.3799401198 94% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.67 12.5979740519 93% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.64 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 93.0 98.500998004 94% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.