No One Needs to Be Grateful For Food

“They should just be grateful for what they get!”

If you spend enough time around food pantries, you will inevitably hear this comment. Most often, it’s a default response to an individual in need expressing any level of discomfort, asking for accommodation of a dietary need, or even just pointing out a spot of mold on a loaf of bread. Anything that can be perceived as criticism of emergency food services is often interpreted as a lack of gratitude, and subsequently condemned. 

While the practice of gratitude can be healthy and fulfilling, demanding it at a food pantry is neither. 

Gratitude cannot be required. That’s why it is a beautiful and powerful emotion- it must be voluntarily fostered and practiced. 

Demanding that someone experiencing food insecurity be grateful for otherwise discarded food is the ultimate assertion of dominance. 

There is an enormous power differential between team members and clients at food pantries. Staff and volunteers determine what type and how much food clients can get. We grant or deny access to foods that reaffirm their culture, traditions, and health. We choose when and how rules are enforced, and we determine what behaviors can strip someone of the privilege of receiving food altogether.

Emergency food access programs have a long history of seeking to control behavior. Work requirements, drug testing, and other policies embody the assumption that hunger results from poor decision making. This reasoning is used to justify strict programs limiting individual choice. Knowing that food is necessary for survival, it’s a powerful way to assert authority and mandate specific behaviors (even though they’re not found to have much effect). Somehow, the idea persists that demanding gratitude from a person in need can also be a tool to help them succeed.

We all need food to live. The question of “who deserves to eat?” is essentially synonymous with “who deserves to live?”

Every person deserves a healthy, nourished life.

Even though there are an abundance of barriers preventing access to the foods people need to lead that healthy life, they still deserve it unconditionally.

Most of the foods that food pantries distribute have already been rejected by someone else. Cans may be dented, some items are expired, and many of the fresh options are nearing the end of their lifespan. Even the most dignified organizations depend upon reframing the reality that most of their food is salvaged from food waste. 

It’s incredibly gratifying when a food pantry client leaves the building with tears in their eyes, effusively gushing about the impact that the food pantry had on their life and the gratitude in their heart. Everyone feels good after that kind of encounter.

But it’s essential to remember that a food pantry has just as powerful an impact on the client who is angry that they need a food pantry at all, who is frustrated from a day of enduring microaggressions, who is resentful of the cheerful person who arrived in a shiny BMW telling them they can’t have an extra can of green beans. This individual is just as deserving of food as anyone else, and food pantries need to ensure that they have systems and practices that do not allow this client to be treated with anything other than respect and dignity.

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

Want to learn more about food justice? Subscribe so you never miss a post! Look for one email in your inbox every Monday morning.