Michelle is the director for a local neighbourhood house in downtown Vancouver and is beginning to question the ethics of the entire organization. The health of the recipients of the donations has been depleting due to the lack nutritious food available at the food bank. Therefore she began to refuse donations of any processed unhealthy foods in order to benefit the health of all the individuals who use the food bank regularly. Her associate Tim believes that refusing food is completely unnecessary and inhumane. Tim and Michelle hold a valid case for themselves and both of them have positive and negative qualities to their opinions. The question of which one is the more ethical case stands in between the both of them.
Tim is Michelle’s associate and doesn’t agree with denying certain foods due to their health qualities because after all food is food, and whether it’s good or bad doesn’t matter. In his eyes it is more beneficial for the people to be eating unhealthy food rather than no food at all. He seems to be taking a view which prioritizes quantity over quality which displays similarities to a utilitarian point of view. In a utilitarian’s eyes the best action is the one which displays the greater amount of good for the greatest amount of people. Therefore in this situation Tim is a utilitarian who cares more about the amount of food and people that will be fed, over serving better quality food which would be given to fewer people. If we were to put an ancient philosophical name to Tim he would be most like the hedonist Epicurus, who strived to produce decisions based on how much the greatest amount of pleasure someone will entail when following through with those decisions. He was greatly interested in how one can alter his/her life in order to reach ataraxia, which means inner peace and tranquility. I feel like Tim fully acts in accordance with his values in this situation because of his firm stance on denying the refusal of food. To him this seems inhumane to deprive someone of food when they are struggling to survive in an expensive city like Vancouver.
Being the director of a neighbourhood house in Vancouver, Michelle’s priority is the people and their well being. She is clearly motivated by the opposite values of Tim which are based upon health as well as quality over quantity. She believes that it would be beneficial for the local residents of the neighbourhood house to be served only healthy non-processed food. Whether there is little food on the shelves doesn’t make a difference to her, just as long as she knows she is giving out proper food that will not be a burden to the persons health. She takes initiative and begins to halt the acceptance of unhealthy processed food which she believers will help the individuals who use the food bank. Michelle doesn’t see the point in having a place where people who cannot afford food go to feed themselves but when they are doing so they are actually hurting their own health.
In order to attempt to reconcile their values my solution would be to allow individuals who use the food bank to be able to obtain their weekly groceries in two ways. They can choose between paying a couple extra dollars in order to receive a customized subscription box of food sent to them once a week, or they can continue to get whatever they please from the food bank. However if they decide to comply with the second option the food bank will not have the same unhealthy processed food as they used to. There will be a limit on the amount of processed food each donator is allowed to provide. Alongside with this regulation is the fact that each donator must provide a certain amount of healthy non processed foods among any other food they decide to give. These rules will hopefully motivate donators to think more health consciously and less about what is quick and convenient to give to the food banks. The subscription boxes will be given to individuals who pay a few extra dollars due to that fact that the boxes will be geared towards improving the health of the food bank users. Each box will be custom made for the recipient and will comply with whatever health issues the person has. For example if the individual has diabetes or an allergy to specific foods, the box will be altered to their needs. For a person with diabetes foods with less sugar and less sodium will be a part of their box in order to keep their health on track. In using this method both Tim and Michelle will feel at ease because the choice of attaining the food is based on the individual. The food bank shelves will not be empty due to the fact that they will still be accepting some junk food, but far less will be entering the doors. The subscription box is more of a bonus for Michelle rather than Tim because it involves quality over quantity which is opposite value of Tim’s.