2023 CSAT — Q13

Locate. This asks for the central idea: find the claim the whole passage exists to support. Every sentence builds one diagnosis: people eat the wrong food (by choice, or by lack of access/affordability), driving non-communicable disease and a health-system burden; “nutrition is under threat worldwide” because “our food systems are not properly responding to nutritional needs,” with “serious detours… from farm to fork.” The thesis is a verdict on the food system’s failure to deliver nutrition.

Test (thesis-vs-detail + scope-fit). The crux must cover the whole passage without importing a remedy it never gives. (b) “we must place food-based nutrition at the centre of our policy debate” captures the diagnosis (food systems failing nutrition) and its natural corollary (make nutrition central), at the right scope. Test others: each names a specific fix — UBI (a), GM crops (c), fortification (d) — that the passage never proposes; the passage diagnoses, it does not prescribe a technology.

Eliminate by anatomy. (a) is a claim the passage never makes — Universal Basic Income appears nowhere; (c) is a claim the passage never makes — genetically modified crops are never mentioned; (d) is a claim the passage never makes — food fortification technology is likewise absent. The transferable rule on central-idea questions: when a passage diagnoses a system, the crux is the diagnosis (and its in-scope corollary), not any single engineered remedy a reader might attach. Key: (b).

“Part of the reason nutrition is under threat worldwide is that our food systems are not properly responding to nutritional needs. Somewhere along that long road from farm to fork, there are serious detours taking place.” The crux is that our FOOD SYSTEMS fail nutritional needs, so nutrition must be central to policy — exactly (b). (a) (UBI), (c) (GM crops) and (d) (fortification) are specific remedies the passage never proposes; the passage diagnoses the food system, it does not endorse any one technological fix → (b).

The passage’s through-line: poor diets (by choice and by lack of access) cause disease and burden health systems; the deeper cause is that “our food systems are not properly responding to nutritional needs,” with “serious detours… from farm to fork.”

(b) “place food-based nutrition at the centre of our policy debate” states the crux and its in-scope corollary. (a) UBI, (c) GM crops, and (d) fortification are each specific solutions the passage never raises — plausible in the world, but not the passage’s point.

Answer: (b).

Three distractors are specific remedies (UBI, GM crops, fortification); the passage offers a diagnosis (food systems fail nutrition) and an in-scope corollary (centre nutrition in policy). CSAT crux items routinely plant attractive solutions the passage never names — each “true in the world” but off-text. The move: when the passage analyses a system rather than prescribing a fix, the crux is the systemic claim, and options that jump to a named technology are out of scope. (b).