December 2003 LSAT Section 4 Question 18

Nutritionist: Because humans have evolved very little since the development of agriculture, it is clear that humans ...

gharibiannick on March 20, 2020

Conclusion

Initially, I thought "it is clear that humans are still biologically adapted to a diet of wild foods" was the conclusion which was supported by the last sentence. I am still unsure why the statement in question is the subsidiary conclusion.

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Annie on March 21, 2020

Hi @gharibiannick,

This is a tricky question as it does involve multiple conclusions. You successfully identified one conclusion, but there is a bigger one in the argument. Here's a breakdown of the argument:

Premise: Humans have evolved little since the development of agriculture.
Intermediate Conclusion: So, humans are still adapted to eat wild foods.
Premise: Not eating wild foods has led to chronic illnesses and physical problems.
Conclusion: So, the more wild foods we eat, the healthier we will be.

As you can see in the breakdown above, each premise + the intermediate conclusion is needed to reach the final conclusion. You can think of these as sort of building blocks. If we took out the intermediate conclusion, then the final conclusion would just come out of nowhere and wouldn't be supported (we wouldn't actually know where the idea for wild foods came from). But, if we took out the final conclusion, the intermediate conclusion would still be fine- it doesn't depend on it. That's how you can tell which one is the ultimate conclusion and which is just there to keep building the argument.