The Food Bank

On Saturday I was part of a team of VA Tech Alumni and UVA Alumni volunteering at the PA Food Bank in Harrisburg, PA.  When we first got there, the man in charge told us that the PA Food Bank was responsible for feeding over 190,000 families throughout Pennsylvania and that their goal was that no one should go hungry.  Our job was pretty simple, go through and sort through huge bins of donated food items and pack all the items into boxes that would be shipped off to food pantries across the state.  These items would then be put on shelves in the food pantries and people would come and select what they wanted.  Simple.

Then we got to the food.  Now, before I begin, I want you to know that I don't disparage what the food bank does, I don't spurn their goal.  I believe in their mission, and I believe that it is in the best interest of citizens that the food bank exists and has volunteers that come out and help make the goal of the food bank a reality... but there is matter of the "food".

I have felt this way for years, but this experience drove it home.  The poor among us seem to get the least from us.  Not one thing that I helped box would I have actually eaten.

Now I know what you're thinking... If you were hungry you would!  And you're right, I would, if it meant life or starvation, I would eat whatever was in front of me.  Did you know that the highest rate of obesity in this country is among the poorest people?  That's not hunger... do you know what the problem is?  It's not a lack of "food", we've got more than enough "food" to feed the world.  It's nutrition.  A lack of nutrition causes obesity- not so much eating too much food, but eating all the wrong food.

At one point in our boxing of "food", we ran out of canned "food", the only vegetables we were boxing were canned, and that makes sense because you really can't box up fresh green beans and expect they won't rot.  But we ran out of cans and some of the people working with us were quite upset about this.  All we had left were starches, and not good ones.  We began discussing the lack of nutritional value in most of the "food" we were boxing.  The very process of canning vegetables destroys the nutrients in them.

Indigenous tribes in the united states, who were once nomadic, suddenly had a high obesity rate once the US government started sending them surplus "food" in response to them almost starving once we took their hunting lands.  This, in effect, is what is happening now.

Most food drives ask for nonperishable food- that usually means canned food.  I know it is cheaper to buy raw, dry ingredients and buy in-season vegetables and freeze them.  I wonder, though, to the extent that the poorest among us would know what to do with dry beans and flour.  Would they know how to bake fresh bread and cook up a healthy meal with dried beans?  And what about the vegetables and fruit?  All of the fruit we were packing was in cans with "heavy syrup".

I started thinking about all this and had a vision... something that would better serve the poorest among us, better utilize the time and efforts of the wonderful people who want to help those people, and bring nutritious, healthy food to the people who need it most and who don't get to choose their own food.

Community gardens that lead to community harvests and co-ops.  We channel funding for the poorest families to learn to garden on set aside, public lands.  Instead of just coming in and packing boxes, we teach them to garden and help them garden in partnership with them, face to face.  We use the warehouses to have freezers to freeze the vegetables and fruits (to the extent they need to be frozen- depending of course on supply) in which the people can come and select what they need.  In addition, the warehouse also becomes a place to store the dry goods, which can be packaged and selected by those in need.

We spend our time training those who really don't know how to cook without opening a tin can.  We teach them how to cook using raw and fresh ingredients and send them home with the tools and simple spices necessary to do the cooking.  In home herb gardens can supplement with fresh spices that they may want.

Think of the sense of pride and purpose these people would have participating in the production of their own food.  Think of the quality of food and training they would be getting.  Think of the marketable job skills and experience they would be getting.  Those who physically or mentally can't participate can still get access to the food, but it will so much healthier.  Heck, if there's enough of a surplus, the Good Food Band can have farmer's markets, etc to contribute to their own funding.  If it worked out, then over time, why couldn't they raise their own animals?

I just think this would be a better solution than packing "Cream of Shrimp" soup along with several jars of cocktail sauce, bottles of bloody mary mix, tubs of margarita mix, tons of indistinguishably dented cans, and lots of soda.

Don't worry, all those cans would be put to some use.  Apparently anything that doesn't get sent to the food pantries gets sent to the farms to feed the animals.  To be honest, I'm with the guy who was working with me at the food bank, who said of the soda cans, "we should just dump the soda down the drain."

I think it is important to feed the hungry and I have a deep respect for the work and dedication of the people at the PA Food Bank, but in the long run, whether it is worse to be obese due to lack of nutrition or hungry, I don't know.  The food system is broken, and we need to fix it!