Rebekkah Greene, owner of Up with Life Caf and Marketplace, is a true believer in the health

Rebekkah Greene, owner of Up with Life Café and Marketplace, is a true believer in the health and healing benefits of food. She offers her customers pure, wholesome, and locally sourced products. Recently, she decided to add a line of hearty “made to order” cereals that she prepares according to each customer’s expressed preferences. To do this, she keeps a wide variety of ingredients on hand from which her customers can choose to “design” their own unique cereal mix. These not only include organic grains, nuts, and dried fruits typically found in cereals, like oat bran and wheat germ, but also a wide assortment of sprouted grains. Rebekkah is following the lead of food innovators who understand that sprouting grains activates food enzymes, increases vitamin content, and decreases starch—all of which improve digestion and absorption. She finds that sprouted grains are particularly delicious choices for warm breakfast cereals. Being a purist, Rebekkah decided that she would take care of the sprouting process herself. She therefore invested in the equipment and designed a “sprouting” space with appropriate temperature and humidity controls. At the onset, her “made to order” cereal mixes were a big hit. But after the novelty wore off, she noticed that sales began to decline. Since most of her regular customers are young to middle-aged women, Rebekkah now considered the possibility that most are weight conscious as well as health conscious. She suspects that many ultimately decided to give up eating cereal for breakfast, even if it can provide superior health benefits, to opt for lower-carb alternatives to maintain or lose weight.

Given her sizable investment in sprouting grains, Rebekkah realizes she needs to do something to get more of her cereals back on the breakfast table! She began to do some research on the topic to better educate her customers. While she found a number of studies suggesting that sprouted grains are particularly healthful, she focused her attention on findings that emphasize the relationship between eating breakfast (specifically cereal) and weight loss. In her weekly flyer on “Up with Life Food Facts” she cited one study she found in a dietetic association journal that showed regular cereal eaters had fewer weight problems than infrequent cereal eaters. She stressed this positive correlation in her advice to customers. The more often you eat cereal for breakfast the more weight you can lose…more cereal = more weight lost! She did fail to mention, however, that this particular study was funded by the big cereal companies.

• Identify the ethical dilemma in this scenario.

• What are the undesirable consequences?

• Propose an ethical solution that considers the welfare of all stakeholders.