Chapter 38 — Exercises

Three tiers. 🪞 the Learning Check-In and reflection; 🔄 retrieval.

⚠️ The last set. Tier 3 asks you to judge the book rather than recall it, and Tier 2's A1 is the only exercise in thirty-eight chapters that produces a document you keep.

⚠️ If self-monitoring is difficult for you, skip anything asking you to record your own eating — §38.6's framework can be written without it.

Tier 1 — Recall and Comprehension

R1. ⚠️ What was the uncomfortable fact in the hook, and what are the three possible answers to it? ⚠️ Which is defensible?

R2. ⚠️ State Chapter 34 §34.7's caveat. ⚠️ Give §38.1's three-part answer — the concession, the asymmetry, and the thing the author would change.

R3. ⚠️ Which object does §38.1 call the most rule-convertible in the book, and why is the tension unresolved?

R4. ⚠️ State Chapter 36 §36.7's ranking of consumer education. ⚠️ Give §38.2's distinction between a LIST and a FILTER, with three differences.

R5. ⚠️ Give the three honest problems §38.2 raises with its own defence.

R6. ⚠️ What are §38.3's four capabilities? ⚠️ And the four things the book was NOT for?

R7. ⚠️ Give §38.5's verdict distribution. ⚠️ Why is ✅ the largest category, and which chapter first answered that question?

R8. ⚠️ Which two verdict columns does §38.5 say will save you the most money, and roughly how many claims do they contain?

R9. ⚠️ Recite as many of §38.5b's thirty-eight one-line summaries as you can. ⚠️ Which four does it say to keep if you keep nothing else, and what does each dispose of?

R10. ⚠️ Name the six sections of §38.6's framework and which phase each comes from.

R11. ⚠️ What are the two rules about the framework document?

R12. ⚠️ In §38.6b's four condensed frameworks, which section is unrecognizable between them and which is doing the same job in all four? ⚠️ How is Kelsey's fifth section different?

R13. ⚠️ Give the seven features of the claim that will arrive in 2035 (§38.7).

R14. ⚠️ Give §38.7's three additional questions for a claim arriving years from now. ⚠️ What is the disposition to hold, and why is it socially least rewarded?

R15. ⚠️ What is §38.7's caution against over-applying the filter?

R16. ⚠️ Give §38.8's four steps for when something in this book turns out wrong. ⚠️ Why does "notice if you are pleased" belong on that list?

R17. ⚠️ What determines what happens after you stop (§38.9)? ⚠️ Which chapter's mechanism is that?

R18. ⚠️ Give §38.9's three warning signs that stopping is likely, and the five-step restart. ⚠️ Why not on a Monday?

R19. ⚠️ Give four rows of §38.9b's table on talking to other people. ⚠️ What is the one exception, and why does §38.2 depend on it?

R20. ⚠️ Give §38.10's seven limits. ⚠️ And what does the 🧾 block say the book's largest financial effect is?

Tier 2 — Application

A1. 🔄 ⚠️ Write the framework. §38.6. Two pages, six sections, your own words.

⚠️ This is the last Project Checkpoint and the only exercise in this book that produces something you keep. Do it before the rest of Tier 2.

a) ⚠️ Is section 5 (the filter) written, or did you write a list? b) ⚠️ Is section 6 (when it goes wrong) written, or blank? c) ⚠️ Is it under two pages?

A2. ⚠️ The inventory. Case Study 1, Step 1.

a) ⚠️ Ten beliefs about food, rated 1–5, before checking anything. b) ⚠️ Check them against the book. c) ⚠️ How many did you rate 5 and get wrong? d) ⚠️ How many did you rate 3? ⚠️ That number is the one that matters.

A3. ⚠️ The 2035 drill. Take a claim that does not exist yet — invent a plausible one.

a) ⚠️ Give it all seven features from §38.7. b) ⚠️ Now run the six questions and the three additions on your own invention. c) ⚠️ Could you construct one that passes? ⚠️ What would it have to look like?

A4. ⚠️ The wrongness drill. Pick one ✅ from Chapter 37 §37.3.

a) ⚠️ Suppose it is overturned next year. Which LEVEL was wrong — mechanism, or recommendation? b) ⚠️ What else that you believe came from the same reasoning? c) ⚠️ What would you change, and what would stay? (§38.8.)

A5. ⚠️ Write your §38.9 sentence.

⚠️ "When I stop, what I will conclude is: __"

a) ⚠️ Is it honest? b) ⚠️ If it contains the word "discipline" or "willpower," rewrite it. c) ⚠️ What is the ONE thing you will resume first, and is it the easiest one?

A6. ⚠️ The conversation audit. §38.9b.

a) ⚠️ In the last month, how many times did you correct someone about food? b) ⚠️ Was any of it asked for? c) ⚠️ How many times did someone comment on a body in your hearing, and what did you do?

Tier 3 — Analysis and Synthesis

S1. ⚠️ Judge the answer to Debt 1. §38.1 answers Chapter 34 §34.7.

a) ⚠️ Is it an answer or an elaborate concession? b) ⚠️ The confidence column is named as unresolved. ⚠️ Design a version that presents evidence honestly AND is safe for a reader who is scoring themselves. Can it be done? c) ⚠️ Kelsey says she would have "used it" two years earlier. Does §38.1 adequately respond?

S2. ⚠️ Judge the answer to Debt 2. §38.2 answers Chapter 36 §36.7.

a) ⚠️ Is the list/filter distinction real, or a rescue? b) ⚠️ §38.2 concedes it is convenient, thinly evidenced and distributionally suspect. ⚠️ Having conceded all three, is there anything left? c) ⚠️ Design a study that would test whether transferring a filter outperforms transferring a list.

S3. ⚠️ The two-of-seven ratio. Case Study 2.

a) ⚠️ Five of seven people were helped most by something non-dietary. ⚠️ Does that undermine the book or contextualize it? b) ⚠️ The only population-level effect came from a coach. ⚠️ What follows for where nutrition education should be aimed? c) ⚠️ Rewrite this book's stated purpose in one sentence, given that finding.

S4. ⚠️ The verdict distribution, interrogated. §38.5.

a) ⚠️ ✅ is the largest category. ⚠️ Is the "clinical, legal and definitional facts" explanation adequate, or convenient? b) ⚠️ Sample ten ✅ verdicts from Appendix E and classify each as a dietary finding or another kind of fact. ⚠️ What ratio do you get? c) ⚠️ If most ✅s are not dietary findings, what does that say about how confident the book actually is about diet?

S5. ⚠️ The book's own failure modes. §38.12 says the author is not a reliable source on the book's worth.

a) ⚠️ Name three places where the book is more confident than its evidence supports. b) ⚠️ Name one place where it is LESS confident than it should be. ⚠️ This is harder and more informative. c) ⚠️ What is the strongest criticism of this book that it does not make of itself?

S6. 🔄 ⚠️ The whole thing. Thirty-eight chapters.

a) ⚠️ Which part was most useful to you, and which was least? b) ⚠️ Which chapter would you cut? ⚠️ Defend the cut. c) ⚠️ What is missing? ⚠️ Name a topic the book should have covered and did not. d) ⚠️ Would you recommend it, and to whom specifically? ⚠️ §38.2's distributional problem says the honest answer names a narrow group.

🪞 Reflection

M1. 🪞 ⚠️ Learning Check-In question 4 asked for the claim you are least confident the author got right. ⚠️ Did you have an answer? ⚠️ If not, what does that suggest about how you read?

M2. ⚠️ Theo read Chapter 11, agreed with it, and did nothing for eighteen months. ⚠️ What in this book have you agreed with and not acted on? ⚠️ Is that a knowledge problem?

M3. ⚠️ Theo went from one "unsure" to six, and calls that the change. ⚠️ Are you less certain than when you started? ⚠️ Does that feel like progress or like loss?

M4. ⚠️ §38.13 says the environment did not improve; your position inside it did. ⚠️ Is that enough? ⚠️ What were you hoping a book about nutrition would do?

M5. 🔄 ⚠️ "I don't think about food that much any more." ⚠️ Is that what you want? ⚠️ If you have spent years thinking about food a great deal, what would it mean to stop — and is there anything you would miss?