It isn't all that weird to hear that. Peter Singer's paper "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" suggested that if we can help and we don't reduce ourselves to marginal utility we should help. For example, you can skip breakfast and save $5 for the poor. If we reduce ourselves to the point we can die from starvation, as in not eating for a week to save $100, that's not helping. He also mentions (I am paraphrasing) that if we know that by not helping them now can reduce population and decrease the famine severity, that might be a better route to take. Now Singer's point may be controversial, but that's the difference between a utilitarian and an denotologist (and an absolutist).