This is very evident in my life. I love eating food. But I also love studying food. I like to learn what different cultures eat and why. What different religions eat and why and how that plays out on a larger scale. I love the theology behind what we eat and what it says about what we believe. And I love feeding people. I believe that hunger is something all people can understand on some level. Even if you have never been food insecure and not known where your next meal is coming from, you may know what it is like to be hungry before your next meal or to be sitting in school hungry.
It is something that is universal. It is also something that impacts all areas of life. Studies have shown that those who do not have food do not do as well in school or in the work place. It can be hard to focus on school when your stomach is in knots. Food insecurity and hunger also impacts health, obesity, healthcare, and anything and everything in between. If the only store in your area doesn't have fresh produce or nutritional options, and the cheaper options are soda, candy, and chips, guess what you're going to get? All these things work together.
The concept of food waste has been getting a lot of traction lately. I have seen multiple posts on facebook about how grocery stores are giving their waste to non-profits. I even follow one organization on Instagram that takes "ugly" produce that stores can't sell and sells it at a discounted rate.
If you google food waste, you'll see a variety of articles, both scholarly and not, about how food waste is ruining the environment. These articles also talk about how we should have enough food to feed all the people, it's all up to distribution. According to Feeding America, in the United States, $218 billion in food is thrown away each year and 21% of landfills are filled with food waste. This is a serious problem.
At Baylor University in Waco (where I went to school... I will talk about Baylor a lot throughout my blogging), a program was started a number of years ago called Campus Kitchens. This program takes unused food from the dining halls to local non-profits. It is a great program that has helped decrease the amount of food waste at Baylor.
However, what I had never thought about until recently is, what happens to the food when it makes it's way to the non-profit?
One of my goals professionally has been at some point to work at a food pantry. This happened faster than I would have anticipated. For 5 months this spring I served as assistant manager for a pantry in a North Dallas suburb.
One of the first things I was struck by when working there is how each store that we receive grocery rescue from gives us hundreds of freshly made bread and baked items each week. Each grocery store has a baked goods section and rarely are all the items taken. So food pantries get those items and if pantries aren't careful, can end up throwing away thousands of pounds of bread each month.
Lately some of the stores have greatly increased their donations to include lots of produce. As I was filling in for our food pantry manager this week, we had pallets (that is plural) of produce come each day. This produce was on its last leg. Sometimes it would be a full pallet of one crop and it would all be bad. Our poor volunteers went through all of it looking for stuff that was salvageable. We ended up not having space for a lot of it because of how much was given and how much of it was bad to begin with. Even with 100+ clients entering our doors each week, there is no way we could give away 10 boxes of spinach on Monday, 12 boxes of broccoli on Tuesday, etc. Twice this week our dumpsters have been full of food waste, waiting for the garbage people to come, and smelling up the area behind our buildings as it sits in the heat. We're going to change this and work with our regional food bank to help redistribute this food better so that less of it is wasted.
What does this say about our society?
I've been thinking that one of the faults of a free and competitive market is that each store produces an over abundance that they will sell and often times it can be difficult to estimate the actual amount of each product you receive. Competition is a real thing -- supply and demand. So we gets tons of breads and produce and other items that do not sell. Which is a good thing, don't get me wrong. We are able to feed people with the donations, which is wonderful! But you also have to wonder what causes the over abundance and how does that get solved.
There are people who work to reduce food waste as part of their jobs everyday. The Feeding America Network does a lot of this, which includes most of your major food banks around the country. They work with grocery stores to help keep them on track as far as their donations and help with distribution of items.
I don't have answers. I wish I did, but obviously this is a giant problem and I'm just seeing one piece of the puzzle. Some of it starts at home and being cautious about what we are buying. It starts with using what is in our pantries and being aware of the impact what we buy makes. Reducing waste on a smaller scale.
Now when I go grocery shopping in any of the stores where we get food, I wonder if I will be seeing some of this food soon in the food pantry. I wonder about what happens to the food that isn't bought. I wonder how we can best feed all people, because people are still hungry when we have an overabundance of food.
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