Three thoughts on . . . pandemic soup kitchens

The situation

I volunteer fairly regularly in the kitchen of our local rescue mission.  In Normal Times, I've helped serve breakfast about once a week.  Nowadays, I've intermittently helped prepare boxes of food to give families in need.  

Three Thoughts

1.  So much plastic.  I get used to avoiding it in my home, but at our rescue mission we do lots of bagging, and re-bagging, and extra bagging.  For example, we'll take a giant bag of potatoes and split it into many smaller (plastic) bags of 4-6 potatoes per family.  Ditto with fruit, vegetables.  Then we put selections of food into larger grocery-style bags.   

2.  So much sugar.  If you're like me, you've pulled cans out of your cabinet to donate to some scout food drive, and realized that you're giving the food you least like (that old can of lima beans, for example).  The corporate version of that is desserts.  Every week, we get piles upon piles of day-old cakes, cookies, cupcakes, more cakes . . . and candy in odd flavors.  Not to mention, sugar-enhanced yogurt cups, beverages, etc.  And all of that gets passed on to families who stop by for their week's worth of groceries.

3.  When I normally think about people who are food insecure, I think about the hunger aspect. But when I help pack boxes, I realize there's also a huge aspect of autonomy and control.  

Last week, for example, the first thirty or so families who came by each got a gallon of milk.  But when we started running out of gallons, families got a half-gallon of milk plus a bottle of seltzer water.  Or three cans of cranberry "vitamin" water and three juice boxes.   Eventually, the milk was replaced with cans of "Mountain Lightning".  We give you the veggies we've got -- somewhat close to the end of their shelf life usually -- and assortments of fruit that are definitely at the now-or-never stage of eating.  

Food security also means food autonomy:  when my husband asks me, "what would you like for dinner?", I increasingly recognize that question alone is a sign of incredible, incredible privilege.  

Bonus thought

You know this; I know this; but it's worth saying it again: food pantries nationwide are seeing larger and larger numbers of families in need, and the absence of school lunch programs mean that kids are especially likely to be affected.   (National Geographic just put out an article, noting, "Even before COVID-19, more than 35 million Americans were considered food insecure. The pandemic has exacerbated the problem. Now, one is six people in the U.S. are projected to be hungry this year."  Giving a bit of extra money to your local food bank doesn't just mean the difference between hunger and a chance to eat; it might mean that a kid gets to drink milk for dinner instead of high-fructose caffeinated flavor liquid.