Is not morally any worse than making you your own hypothetical saint.
But I didn't make it up. I read voraciously, and when this started happening 6 or 7 years ago and it was making the news, the real story came out. None of those shoplifting baby formula or laundry detergent were doing it to feed their babies, or put the babies through the gentle cycle in their ghetto laundrymat's washing machine. It was merely a decent commodity for fencing, and it was sold mostly on ebay though sometimes it'd end up sold out of storage units and trunks of cars or landed at a flea market. Go google it, I'll wait.
This is lifted wholesale from one of the folk tales of the honorable thief stealing only enough to feed his family, by the way. How many of these shoplifters steal actual loaves of bread?