Realizing the Common Good

Running head: REALIZING THE COMMON GOOD
REALIZING THE COMMON GOOD
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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REALIZING THE COMMON GOOD
The shared responsibility of the common good
The Common Good is achieved when people in the community work together for the
wellbeing and improvement of everyone. The principle of Common Good states that the rights of
the people to have possession of community resources should be balanced with the needs and
desires of the dispossessed and the disadvantaged. In this context, the global fast food market
does not does not realize the common good. Fast food is amongst the fastest growing food type
markets and the fast food companies are amongst the biggest earners. Owners of fast food
companies assume that consumers across the globe have the same taste for food and hence, sell
food products that are the same in every culture (Monteiro et al., 2013). However, the major
concerns are the price and quality of the fast food. The common good here is not realized in the
sense that the fast food companies do not consider the health and economic status of the
consumers. They only care about their own profit irrespective of the way it comes (Moodie et al.,
2013).
As it has been discussed in Assignment 2, fast food consumption leads to several ill
effects and diseases. In the busy world, humans often give up the idea of cooking and eating
healthy foods and resort to eating unhealthy fast food. This further makes the fast food
companies greedy and craves for more. In this way, the global fast food companies do not realize
the shared responsibility of the common good. The companies do not realize that it is their
responsibility as well to care for the people of the world.
Proposed ways to address the issue
The issue could be addressed in numerous ways especially from the perspective of the
Catholic Social Teachings or the CST principles (Guitián, 2015). As a social working

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REALIZING THE COMMON GOOD
professional, it becomes essential to address the issue using the CST principles because these
principles provide a broad overview of the issues that the human beings face due to the global
issue of fast food selling. The various CST principles are the Common Good, Human Dignity,
Stewardship and participation, solidarity, preferential option for the poor and care for for the
creation of God including the rights and responsibilities of the human beings (Grace, 2013). With
the help of these CST principles, it would be easier for the social work professional to address
the global issue of fast food marketing, which is harmful for the world population.
The Common Good principle has been describe already. It states that each individual has
the shared responsibility to promote the welfare of the people and the community (Caritas.org.au,
2019). In this regard, it could be proposed that the issue of global fast food marketing could be
addressed locally by encouraging the fast food sellers about the ill effects it has on their own
people. The local fast food sellers selling global fast food products must be provided awareness
sessions on the ill effects of fast food to the entire community (Couch, Fried & Komesaroff,
2017). This is a difficult task considering the fact that people work mostly for financial stability
and to ask them to stop selling fast food would be a wrong idea. The sellers could instead be
encouraged to make use of healthy food products in preparing the fast food so that it does not
affect the health of the people. The common good further states that the each individual deserves
the right to benefit from the community but in this case, the global fast food sellers only benefit.
According to the principle of Human Dignity, the human being has been made in the
image of the God and hence, has the freedom to enjoy fundamental dignity and freedom.
Injustice, poverty, hunger and oppression cause the human dignity to fade (Caritas.org.au, 2019).
As humans, one should recognize this and treat her or his own neighbor as the image of God.
When one does this, the issue of harmful fast food marketing could be addressed as well, on both