Beggars, Choosers and Educators

Beggars, Choosers and Educators

So here's an interesting situation. I am a charitable person. I also, to a large degree, believe in freedom of choice. I am also a bit of a nutritionist.

Then this situation presents itself to me. A person begging for a meal. Okay. They want a swiss mushroom burger, onion rings, and a coke. Umm... I wouldn't let my kids eat that, I would never advise anyone to eat that, especially if that's your sole source of nutrition. Good god.
So what am I "allowed" to do by my own moral rules? This is an unforeseen intersection of my guiding values. I am charitable, I am somewhat bound to feed her. I believe in freedom; I am somewhat bound to give her what she wants. But I am a nutritionist; I am bound to advise her to eat differently. What, then, is my course of action? Should I stand there and argue with her to order something different? Should I ignore my gut feelings and give her what she wants, which will contribute to the further deterioration of her health? Should I threaten not to give her charity if she does not order my way? Or should I just order what I think is best, say my money my rules, and let her eat it or dump it?

As it stands I went with the last option. I didn't feel comfortable standing around and arguing with her, telling an older woman that she was making bad decisions for herself, and that I, a youngling, know better. At the same time I can't just be a bystander, an ignorant party and contributor to either her starvation or gluttony. It doesn't look like she's starving, but I'm pretty sure that if a fat person doesn't eat, they'll die of vitamin deficiency before they run out of fat to metabolize. I'd have to research further into the matter.

The greatest, arguably controlled experimentation with human starvation was the holocaust. In that situation, most photographs that I've seen are of incredibly emaciated people. But does evidence exist that corpulent individuals keeled over early, due to some other cause? Probably heart disease and the such killed the genetically predisposed. But conversely, what kept the emaciated people alive as long as they did? What was the composition of their gruel? What concentrations of vitamins, minerals and electrolytes did it contain? How much protein and carbohydrate? And what is important, the absolute values or the relative concentrations? Did they survive on a 10gcarb/10g protein diet because it was in a 50/50 ratio? Would doubling the amount of carbohydrate have had a positive or negative effect? What if the carbohydrate were replaced with fat? These are terribly morbid questions to ask and ones more readily answered in the context of therapeutic diet than of starvation, though such experiments were conducted in America with volunteers, which would probably be a better place to start.

But all of these conditions are a bit of a far cry from the current problem in our homeless, "starving" population. An over-abundance of fat and highly refined sugar. I had no problem giving her a mushroom burger; protein is important. I ordered a side of fruit instead of onion rings and a bottle of water instead of soda. When I handed it all over she said water was better anyway, so I felt redeemed. As it turned out someone else got her some food too so she'll have enough to eat today. A Sunday. If there's one day out of every seven that the homeless should eat well, it's Sunday. At least in a country that subscribes to Judeo-Christian sensibilities. I can't fathom all the inconsistencies, as I have just found a few in myself to boot, but I can hope for this much, that the homeless will eat on Sunday.