Author: Anina Estrem

My food pantry often receives donations of food from other organizations that are unable to distribute it for a variety of reasons. Recently, staff from one of these pantries stopped by with a donation as I was loading up a cart of butter. Several of the cases had been crushed, and butter was oozing out of the packaging. It was a mess, and the ruined boxes were inappropriate and unsafe for anyone to eat. I quickly sorted through them and tossed them in the garbage without a second thought.

The staff from this other pantry watched me do this with horror. “You’re just throwing it out? Can we take it? I can’t believe you threw it out!”

This request was an uncomfortable surprise. As the packages were clearly damaged and leaky, they were not safe to distribute according to food banking guidelines. I did not let them take the butter.

This incident makes me reflect on the bigger question of what exactly our two food pantries are trying to accomplish, and how we use wildly different strategies to pursue those goals.

For many years, the traditional food pantry model has operated under the idea that quantity of food distributed is the primary measure of success. Pounds given away is the easiest metric available, and combined with the attitude that people should be “grateful for what they get,” has produced a culture that encourages and rewards the process of giving as much food away as possible, prioritizing quantity over quality. This results in food pantries eager to share ruined packages of butter with their clients.

Luckily, the food banking industry is slowly transitioning towards a focus on dignity, which challenges the assumption that quantity trumps quality.  This requires anti-hunger organizations to consider the quality of the food they are distributing and how it impacts the people who eat it instead of focusing on our need to give it away.

In many cases, this means throwing out food that you might salvage in your own kitchen, but is inappropriate for a food pantry.

This dichotomy is why I am wary about conversations celebrating the reduction of food waste by donating to food pantries. It perpetuates the idea that it’s okay for people experiencing hunger to eat food that should be thrown away.

Food banks and pantries depend on these donations, but we must be incredibly careful about how we frame these discussions.

If an onion has a little mold on it, it’s quite easy to cut and peel the bad spot off and use the rest. However, no one has ever left a food pantry with a moldy onion and felt excited, respected, or supported. Volunteers and leadership may baulk at the idea of throwing the onion out, citing fears that clients won’t have enough food. A single onion will never make-or-break someone’s food security. But when we make a habit of distributing food of poor quality; slimy lettuce, mushy bruised pears, and packs of butter that look like they were run over by a truck, then we are hurting food security and obstructing food justice. Quantity can never overcome poor quality when it comes to food.

When our goal is to distribute as much food as possible, we fail to offer the support our community really needs while also disrespecting our shoppers.

As hunger needs rise, food pantries must prioritize increasing our food supply. But when that is our only measure of success, it focuses entirely on our side of this transaction.

Saving food from the garbage and giving away as much as possible looks great to donors, volunteers, and supporters, but it entirely disregards the needs of our shoppers.

When food pantries make empathy our primary focus, examining what it’s like to receive our own food options can be transformative. We will always need to prioritize seeking more resources, finding new donors, and building a stronger food supply (until we solve the root causes of hunger). But if we don’t intentionally and deliberately examine what food we are distributing and why, food pantries can lose track of our common goal to ensure that everyone has the food they need to thrive.

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

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Americans love to judge what people are eating. We have complicated and contradictory expectations about what and how people experiencing hunger should eat. One of the dominant assumptions I hear far too often is that people living in poverty make poor food choices, and that different decisions would improve both their budget and health. A common solution to this assumption is to teach people to cook.

Identifying a lack of cooking skills as a root cause of hunger transforms it into an individual rather than a systemic problem. It shifts the responsibility of solving hunger from policy-level to one of individual responsibility.

It’s also completely wrong. Hunger has very little to do with the individual choices anyone makes.

People experiencing hunger do not have worse cooking skills or nutritional knowledge than individuals who are food secure. They face greater barriers to accessing and cooking healthier foods.

Every day at my food pantry, I engage with clients who admire our fresh produce but then explain how their 16-hour workday, or lack of refrigeration in their apartment, or disability that keeps them from standing too long, prevents them from utilizing these foods.

When people aren’t using emergency food assistance programs, fresh produce is more expensive and primarily available at larger grocery stores. It can be hard for low-income communities inundated with gas stations and convenience stores to find fresh options, and what is available is often more costly.

Even when whole foods are accessible, cooking from scratch is time-consuming. Many households experiencing food insecurity work long hours and/or multiple jobs, which limits both time and physical capacity to prepare fresh meals. Anyone who has worked a long day knows how hard it can be to get home and assemble a labor- and time-intensive meal.

Cooking Education is a Solution to the Wrong Problem

Many anti-hunger organizations host or facilitate cooking classes. I love to cook and believe that everyone benefits from being comfortable in the kitchen. However, it is important to not foster the narrative that better cooking skills can end hunger. Teaching a family how to prepare dry beans does not help them escape poverty.  Even if this saves a couple dollars, it is unlikely to make a meaningful impact on anyone’s budget (Millennials tired of avocado toast condemnation will sympathize).

And far too often, cooking classes focus on foods and meals familiar to program leadership, which may not be the same as their clients. Creating a culinary curriculum intended to save money or improve health can easily dismiss the practices and foods important to the community being served.

Most people know the essentials of healthy eating, but face enormous systemic barriers to actually changing how they eat.

How to effectively partner cooking education with anti-hunger advocacy:

• Present cooking classes as a community activity, a social event, and an effort to help people have fun in the kitchen. Improved skills and confidence in the kitchen can greatly increase quality of life, but they are not an anti-hunger solution. Organizations that present cooking classes as budget savers should tread carefully, recognizing the tradeoffs in time spent and cultural relevance. (Learning to cook with dry beans is a dominant theme of anti-hunger cooking classes, but it requires extra time that people might not have and neglects the fact that many cultures don’t eat beans. It’s great for people to try new foods, but we never want to dismiss them as less valuable than what people are already comfortable eating.)
• Practice community leadership. Ask food pantry clients to teach how to make culturally relevant dishes. Celebrate their traditional preparation methods. Make sure the foods available are appropriate, useful, and accessible to participants.
• Don’t ever waiver from the concept that hunger is a systemic problem and that it requires systemic solutions. Our individual efforts can make an individual impact, but they don’t change how inequality is structured. Cooking classes should be treated as a supplemental option, rather than a targeted solution.

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

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Years ago, at one of the first food pantries I managed, I had an organizing problem. For some reason, I kept finding canned goods in the wrong sections, despite my careful signage and meticulous sorting. My assistants were high school students, mostly immigrants from a certain region in Africa, who were committed to helping the pantry run smoothly, so I was unsure what was going on.

One day, I had a student ask me to explain what broth was as they didn’t know what shelf to put it on. This led to the discovery that they had never eaten soup before. Soup was not a part of their culinary tradition. Suddenly, it made sense why I kept finding chicken noodle soup in the pasta section, minestrone on the vegetable shelf, and chili among the beans.

               The foods we grow up eating and the culinary traditions our cultures practice are deeply ingrained in our identities. They are so much a part of us that it can be exceptionally easy to forget that they are not shared by everyone around us.  

I had not considered that these students might not recognize all the foods we were distributing. Since many of them were also food pantry clients, this also taught me that my food pantry was offering up foods that their families didn’t eat. This is an easy mistake to make, and one that is seriously detrimental to how we fight hunger.

It is essential that we ensure people experiencing food insecurity have access to foods that are comfortable for them, and not just easy for organizations to distribute.

Food pantries, and nonprofits in general, tend to be led and managed by people of homogenous backgrounds. This means that services will always skew towards the traditions and practices of their specific culture, even when clients have a different background. Although anti-hunger advocates have made great strides in developing a diversification of services, we still have a long way to go.

This past week, my current food pantry moved into full Thanksgiving mode.* We are lucky enough to have turkeys for everyone, along with stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and canned pumpkin. This abundance is immensely popular- it was our busiest week in history.

But we also served hundreds of households who don’t celebrate Thanksgiving and came to us for cabbage, and peppers, and stew meat and the day-to-day foods that make them happy. It takes deliberate and conscious effort to ensure their needs are not subsumed by the demand for Thanksgiving foods, since our organization’s leadership and volunteer community are overwhelmingly celebrants who haven’t considered that anyone might not be mashing potatoes or baking pie this week.

How Food Pantries Can Prioritize Culturally Specific Foods:

• Encourage clients to volunteer (all food pantries should do this anyways, for a thousand reasons). Clients will have the best insights into what foods work and what doesn’t, and what their community wants more of. They may also recognize these foods when they’re donated, since they can be unfamiliar to other culinary traditions.

• Examine the demographics of your clientele. Even anecdotal information will give you valuable insight- if you serve a significant population of a specific community, you should discuss with them what foods they might be looking for.

• Let people take what they want, and as much as they want. Many of my eastern European clients are thrilled to take 5-6 cabbages, while our Latinx families are particularly enthused by bags of peppers. Mandating that everyone gets an equal amount of both only ensures that everyone’s cultural preferences are denied, while letting them take what they needs empowers them eat how their culture practices.

• Experiment. Don’t shy away from foods just because you don’t know what to do with them. You may learn that no one really wanted that specific food, or you may realize it’s in high demand and you just hadn’t heard the requests for it. This can be a fun opportunity for staff and volunteers to learn about new foods.

*While I respect the importance of culinary tradition, it’s also important to remember that the origins of Thanksgiving are found in a myth crafted to obscure a history of colonization and the genocide of millions of Native Americans. For many, this day is a day of mourning.

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

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Historically, the week before Thanksgiving is the busiest of the year for our food pantry. Combined with the growing need and fears of yet another government shutdown, it will likely be the busiest week in our organization’s history. Record-high attendance last week attests to this.

High demand and even higher stress levels add to the difficulty of maintaining a space that feels welcoming, abundant, and respectful. Such high numbers deplete our food supplies and adds to the stress felt by staff and volunteers alike while fostering fears of scarcity in our shoppers. Yet it is still possible to ensure that everyone feels welcome, seen and nourished despite the chaos.

Here’s how other organizations can replicate this success.

How do we maintain an attitude of abundance in a high stress environment?

• We encourage our clients to take as much as they want of as many items as they can. At the beginning of every day, we’ll ensure our shelves are filled to bursting with canned goods and pay special attention to items that feature in holiday dishes like canned pumpkin, green beans, and cream of mushroom soup. It is more work to keep the shelves full, but pays off in the relief we can see in our clients’ faces as they wheel full shopping carts out the door. It can also help make up for the essential ingredients we generally don’t have- like evaporated milk, sugar or flour.

• We are excited and enthusiastic to welcome new clients. As soon as they walk in the door, they are greeted with “I’m so glad you made it in today! We’re excited to help you out!” This makes a huge difference in ensuring people feel welcome, even after waiting in a long line outside in the cold. We’ve created a specific volunteer role dedicated to providing a welcome and orientation for first-time shoppers, which both improves flow and gives our new shoppers confidence that we are truly pleased to welcome them.

• I make sure my team feels appreciated. We’re working harder than anyone else I know, and at the end of the day it’s easy to see the fatigue in everyone’s faces. It’s essential that anti-hunger advocates celebrate and highlight our individual contributions. Too often, nonprofit organizations take for granted the enormous burdens that their staff shoulder in order to foster success, which is an easy way to burn out your best people.

Hunger is a systemic problem and can’t be solved just by offering food to those who need it, but at the same time, hundreds of families will enjoy a bountiful holiday dinner thanks to the efforts of food pantries across the country. By making simple adjustments in how we display food, treat our clients, and appreciate our contributions, we make enormous progress in building more effective, dignified, and welcoming emergency food assistance programs.

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

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This week at my food pantry, as I walked by the long line of clients eagerly waiting to come inside to shop for groceries, I heard one woman on her cell phone say, “I’m already three months behind on my rent. I need all the help I can get.”

Unfortunately, this is not a unique story. Particularly as the holiday season approaches and people struggle with the impacts of inflation, more and more families will make hard choices about what they can afford and what they can do without, and far too often food is the easiest to cut.

At about this time every year, food banks and pantries across the country also begin strategizing and planning for the influx of need that accompanies the holiday season and the dark, colder months.

Emergency food access programs are bracing for a crush of clients as the need continues to rise.

We increasingly encounter clients forced to choose between buying food or heating their home, or paying rent, or purchasing new jackets for their children, or staying up-to-date on their medication.

Luckily, the holiday season also tends to bring a huge interest in donating food. Food banks and pantries will soon start to see a significant increase in both direct donations from individuals as well as through food drives. While we can’t solve most of the challenges faced by our clients, we can work to get them the food they need so their money can be spent elsewhere.  

The food we offer our clients can make a huge difference as to whether we can really meet their needs, or simply alleviate an immediate crisis, so being thoughtful about your choices can have a powerful impact. If your or your community are contemplating donating to anti-hunger programs, here’s what you should know.

What we love:

Donate foods that make YOU happy. If you love it, chances are someone in our clientele will love it too. We serve an incredibly diverse population, and I’ve yet to encounter a food that someone doesn’t want. Go ahead and donate canned dolmas, giant jugs of chili oil, and bags of dried mushrooms. Someone’s got a recipe they’re excited to try.

Seasonings and condiments. There is a strong emphasis on donating healthy foods right now (as there should be) but even with all the healthy options in the world, it can be hard to make them into a tasty meal without salt, pepper, herbs, or spices. These are more expensive ingredients, which means they are donated less frequently.

Baking ingredients. While boxed mixes are wonderful for many people, we also serve plenty of clients who are delighted to make their own bread, cookies for their grandkids, or sometimes even pastries for food pantry staff! We are chronically low on flour, sugar, baking soda and powder, baking chocolate, and other ingredients for from-scratch baking. These items in particular often help people celebrate their culture and traditions, and we love any chance we have to uplift them.

If you’re planning a food drive and know the specific organization you want to donate to, call and ask what they need! They will probably have some very specific answers, and appreciate your attention to their food supply.

What we don’t love:

Homemade foods. You may be the most accomplished canner in the world, but we don’t know that, and all our foods must be made in a commercial kitchen so we cannot give away your beautiful homemade jam.

Open and partially-used foods. If you’re moving or cleaning out your kitchen, you may be eager to donate half-empty bags of sugar or gently-used spices rather than throw them out. While they may be safe and functional, no one wants someone else’s cast-offs. Give these to your friends instead because we cannot distribute them.

Alcohol. It should be obvious, but it happens too regularly that someone donates a bottle of wine or a couple cans of beer. While it is surely well-intentioned, there are a million reasons (and federal regulations) why we can’t give theses away.

When you package items together. Most pantry models cannot keep your donation together, so while we appreciate the thought that goes into taping spaghetti, pasta sauce, and shelf-stable parmesan together, it is highly unlikely that we can distribute them that way.

Want to do even more?

Donate year-round. Consider signing up for a program like the Portland Food Project (commonly known as Green Bag) that ensures donations come in throughout the year instead of just during the holidays. My household participates, and we have fun every two months loading up our green bag at the grocery store with the food options I know are most in demand. My food pantry is also a recipient, and the program adds essential variety to our food supply, especially in the summer months when donations drop significantly.

Avoid glass options when you can. With the volume of food we’re working with, it can be hard to ensure it is all handled as gently as it should.

Consider adding non-food items like can openers, toothbrushes, diapers (especially bigger sizes) or menstrual hygiene products. Many food banks and pantries also have systems to distribute these high demand items.   

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

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Every day, our food pantry distributes approximately 7,000 pounds of food, all of which is carried or loaded on carts from the warehouse to be displayed on shelves, tables, or in bins. The physical demands of this work are extreme, and volunteers and staff are often exhausted at the end of shifts.

It’s easy to get caught up in these big numbers- our team moves 35,000 pounds of food per week, and we’re extremely proud of it. But tangible statistics like this can also mean that we forget to consider the other forms of labor that are equally essential to keep a food pantry running. For instance, the labor of helping someone facing food insecurity feel more comfortable and at ease while shopping at a food pantry.

Using a food pantry is highly stigmatized, and people experiencing food insecurity may feel embarrassed, humiliated, or simply extra emotional when they walk through our doors.

Welcoming clients to the pantry requires staff and volunteers to put forth extra positive and open energy.

I see this effort each day in how our team practices empathy as we explain the process for an overwhelmed new shopper, patience as we explain it again for individuals who worry about doing something wrong, and sympathy as we confess how our food supply may not meet everyone’s needs.

In part due to the stigma of food assistance, people often wait until their cupboards are completely bare before they seek our services.  Sometimes they arrive under massive stress, which at times can manifest in some uncomfortable encounters: disrespectful or abusive language and unpredictable or even scary behavior.

It’s important for food pantries to explicitly recognize that managing client stress levels while offering respectful, dignified food assistance is emotionally exhausting.

Our pantry staff are exceptionally skilled in de-escalation, and when difficult or dangerous situations are diffused with skill, it’s easy for leadership to miss the fact that it was necessary at all.  And even harder to recognize the full extent of the emotional labor that goes into prevention rather than reaction.

 To build a pantry that prioritizes compassion, respect and dignity requires enormous amounts of effort to ensure clients feel welcome even when they’re rude, or feel taken care of even when they’re dissatisfied, or feel like their needs are heard even when we can’t meet them.

Recognizing that emotional labor is an essential part of fighting hunger, how can leaders in anti-hunger organizations better support their staff and volunteers?

• Listen. For many people, even the concept of emotional labor is unfamiliar. I’m confident my female readers, and some men out there, have tried to explain the stresses and demands of emotional labor, only to have them brushed away.  Anti-hunger leaders need to listen and learn about the emotional demands of this work.

• Be aware of gender roles.  Non-profit organizations are predominately staffed by women and managed by men.  Men in leadership roles need to engage in structuring a dialogue, recognize, and share the weight of emotional labor in the workplace.

• Recognize the extra burden through compensation.  Exhaustion due to emotional labor means other tasks may not get done, which can impact performance, promotions, and wages.   Leaders must work to avoid penalizing women working just as hard, if not harder than their male peers.  Emotional labor is rarely listed on job descriptions, but can easily be a full-time job in itself.

Major thanks to Kern Herron for his contributions to this piece.

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

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For the past week or more, anti-hunger advocates have been nervously watching the news regarding a potential government shutdown. A shutdown would have had immediate, harmful impacts on programs that are essential for keeping families fed, and left charitable organizations strained to the max.

SNAP, WIC, and the National School Lunch Program are the most effective tools we have for fighting hunger.

SNAP serves nine times more people than American food banks, which is why a pause in funding had this field so panicked.

For an industry that is already overwhelmed with need, the repercussions of this shutdown had my colleagues and I quaking in our shoes. The thought of adding to our already oversized workload was daunting, to put it mildly.

Although I’m relieved to see that the immediate crisis has been postponed, the panic this incited in the anti-hunger field is important to examine.

Several days ago, I had an informational interview with someone who works on national-level anti-hunger program implementation, and I learned that these advocates are equally exhausted. During the height of the pandemic, fears of hunger rates escalating out of control led to the dedication of significant (and needed!) additional funding. But this boost in resources also increased the workload of the people who administer the programs far beyond their capacity.

My colleague and I commiserated on the fact that anti-hunger advocates at every level are burnt out. A perpetually increasing workload (with no end in sight) and the nonprofit industry’s preference for spending as much as possible on clients and programs and as little as possible on staffing and overhead means that staff lack the support to thrive (or even just succeed) in their roles.

We’re reaching a tipping point.

At the end of February 2023, people receiving SNAP benefits lost approximately $90 per person per month to spend on food. Anti-hunger advocates correctly sounded the alarm that we were facing a hunger crisis that could overwhelm emergency food resources.

Several months later, those warnings have been proven correct. My food pantry has seen a significant increase in the number of clients, and particularly in people who have never before used emergency food services. A year ago, we were serving about 110 households per day. Last Friday, we served 181 in the same four-hour period.

Considering the impacts of inflation, we anticipate breaking new attendance and distribution records every month from now through at least December.

It is important that we continue to provide exceptional service to these families, but I’m also realizing that now is the time we need to pay attention to our anti-hunger advocates.

The physical demands of running a food pantry include moving several thousand pounds of food every day alongside the emotional labor of making sure clients feel comfortable and safe, volunteers are welcomed, and as much support as possible is provided to individuals in crisis. Growing numbers of clients mean more food, higher stress levels, and greater administrative responsibilities, all to be completed in the same eight-hour workday.

No matter how much we love the work, we cannot continue to meet the demands being placed on emergency food assistance programs without additional support.

As the holidays approach, we will begin to hear calls for food drives, volunteers, and funds from food banks and pantries who will likely cite the increasing hunger needs of our communities. They may boast about how the majority or entirety of your donation goes to helping people in need. What this claim neglects to include is that they only achieve this by minimizing wages and depriving staff of the resources they need to do their job well.

How can you fight hunger without burning out your advocates?

• Research the priorities of your favorite nonprofits. Do they boast about low overhead costs? Does their staff make a living wage? Let this inform your donation decisions and be vocal about it.

• Advocate for trust-based philanthropy. The neglect of nonprofit staff is just as much a fault of funders as it is of leadership. When organizations have the autonomy to spend money how they want rather than being told by outside voices, they can make choices that support their mission rather than cater to donor preferences.

• Remember that hunger is a systemic problem, based in oppression and poverty, and that long-term effective solutions will address these issues rather than just food access. Support anti-poverty measures by voting, advocacy, and engaging with your elected leaders.

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

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I once lived in an apartment on a quiet street where my dog woke up annoyingly early for the first walk of the day. One summer, I noticed a young man regularly sleeping in his car on our street.

My morning dog walk often coincided with passing him as he brushed his teeth and put on his dress shirt and blazer. Then he’d drive away, presumably to work, where I would guess that no one knew he was living in his car.

Our society has a very narrow idea of what it looks like to be houseless, typified by mental illness and substance use, which massively fails to understand the nuances and complexity of the experience. These assumptions can also cause us to misinterpret the food needs of people who are not securely housed.  

Houseless vs. Homeless

The words we use carry power, which is why it’s important to be thoughtful and reflective of our choices.

In my food pantry, we are intentional about using the term “houseless” rather than “homeless.” Because the term “home” encompasses a structure as well as our surrounding relationships and support system, “homeless” implies that someone doesn’t belong, both physically and socially. Although some of our clients lack a physical house, many have strong roots and relationships in the community that should not be dismissed or erased. This is their home, no matter where they live.

Our society tends to assume that people who are houseless only live on the street. The reality is there are many ways someone may be without a consistent place to stay.

• People who lack a physical house may jump from couch to couch in friends’ homes.

• They may live in a long-term hotel or a shelter.

• We serve an increasing number of people who are staying in their cars.

• Some individuals have a car which allows them to travel to a camp in the woods for greater privacy and safety.

• I’ve met individuals who rented a self-storage locker and lived there for months at a time.

Particularly in the Portland Metro area where housing costs are incredibly high, it’s entirely feasible that someone can have a steady income and a car but still not be able to meet the demands of a rental deposit and consistent bills. Without the capacity to prep or store food, it can be hard to access the food they need to thrive and be secure.

We often don’t know if people are houseless when they enter our pantry. When they don’t meet our visual expectations of an unhoused person, we often assume they are securely housed, which can influence the foods that are offered to them.

Accommodating Diverse Needs

The foods that food banks and pantries offer are generally not well-suited to those experiencing houselessness. Especially with the growing push for healthier, from-scratch options, food pantry resources increasingly require access to a kitchen and cooking implements.

Without consistent housing, our clients may not have a refrigerator to store food, a saucepan for cooking it, or even a fork to eat with which limits what these shoppers can eat.

Our food pantry is located downtown in a major metropolitan area with a significant houseless population. Years ago, the organization realized that there was a need for more options than fruits and vegetables and canned goods to meet the needs of the people who couldn’t use our average pantry offerings.

We now operate a Snack Window, which is open to everyone but particularly targeted at people without cooking capabilities. Here we serve donated sandwiches and salads from Safeway and 7-11, chips, granola bars, juices, protein shakes, and pastries from Starbucks. (Because it is all donated, we never know what we will get, which is why it is a “snack window” as opposed to a “meal” or “lunch” site).

This window currently serves over one hundred individuals per day, including people living outside, in their cars, couch surfing, shelters, or in apartments that lack kitchens, cooking equipment, or utilities.

We also offer what we call a Traveler’s Box. I once received an impassioned note from a houseless client who was frustrated that when he had shopped at our pantry in preparation for a holiday closure, there were few options he was able to stock up on without access to a kitchen. This note inspired the Traveler’s Box for anyone who is looking for more than a snack but unable to cook.

These boxes include canned soups, fruit, meats (such as tuna and chicken) and meals like Chef Boyardee or Spaghetti-O’s, which are all pop-top and don’t require a can opener. We also pack shelf-stable milk and cereal, peanut butter, crackers, and snacks like chips and granola bars. Traveler’s Boxes provide more food than the daily snack window option but likely less than what people might take if they did a full shop, which is often ideal for those who may be on foot or have limited storage capacity.

The demand for these types of foods varies based on the population served. Food pantries in less accessible locations to individuals on foot may not have such a need for instant and easy-to-prepare options. But all anti-hunger organizations should assume that a portion of their clientele is under-housed, and ensure they offer options and services to support them.

How can pantries support people experiencing houselessness?

-Encourage donations of can openers, pop-top cans, and foods that don’t require preparation or refrigeration and make them easily accessible to clients.

-Seek out donations of prepared foods like sandwiches, cut fruit, and single-serve drinks.

-Educate volunteers, donors, and staff on the complexity of houselessness and discuss our assumptions and stereotypes.

-Engage or partner with local shelters who may offer or know of additional resources.

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

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As I pushed a cart piled high with fresh fruit into the food pantry lobby, a child of about 8 years old yelled out “FRUIT!” in a hilariously loud and deep voice. He eagerly selected apples, nectarines, blueberries, and several bags of grapes while his mom assured me that he’d eat them all in no time. 

I love it when our shoppers are excited about the options we have, and I always encourage my clients to help themselves when they see items that will bring them joy and nourishment. But it’s also important to note that because this client took so much fruit, other clients had less available to them.

I am a passionate advocate for allowing clients to take as much as they want of whatever they like. For those who believe that individuals living in poverty can’t be trusted to make sound choices, this is a daring and uncomfortable strategy. The opposite approach is to manage client choices by dictating what and how much food they can take, which is often justified in the name of fairness.

If we are working to end hunger, is fairness an appropriate goal?

In food pantries, food supplies are often closely managed to ensure that everyone has access to all the same food and no one is given an advantage over another (like taking all the red onions so that someone else doesn’t get any).

As anti-hunger advocates increase our understanding of social justice, we’re starting to recognize that equitable food access acknowledges everyone has different needs and challenges that bring them to the food pantry, and there’s no “one size fits all.”

Initially, it sounds reasonable that everyone visiting a food pantry be given the exact same options. No one wants to see that the person in line in front of them get a box of strawberries while they get none. Is that fair?

Why should food pantries focus on equity instead of fairness?

Everyone has different needs.

Some families are thrilled to fill their shopping cart with fresh fruit. Others eagerly stuff their bags with frozen breakfast sandwiches. Occasionally, someone is enthused about cream of mushroom soup. It does all these households a disservice to give them all the exact same thing, even if the fresh fruit family won’t eat the breakfast sandwiches, and only one person wants the cream of mushroom soup. By limiting their options, all these families will probably leave the pantry with less food than they need because they don’t take the food they won’t use.

It’s easy for people of privilege to rationalize that if someone is truly hungry, they’ll take whatever is offered (the idea “beggars can’t be choosers”), but that attitude is ignorant of reality. We shouldn’t expect people to give up their cultural, religious, or nutritional needs to accommodate our judgements about what is fair.

Many food pantry clients have different cooking capabilities.

Some people have full kitchens, but many are working with nothing but a microwave or a hot plate. Some people have refrigerators, and some have campfires. Mandating that everyone has equal access to all the same types of foods simply reduces the amount of available food that they can utilize (one of the pillars of food security.) A senior may have no interest in chopping up a heavy squash, while a immigrant family may be passionately opposed to eating microwave meals. Allowing each of these households one squash and one prepared meal does them both a disservice.

Many food pantry clients also have disabilities or chronic illness, and dictating that they have access to the same foods as everyone else can also impact their health. A diabetic may prefer taking extra vegetables over canned fruit. A gluten-free individual may want to snack on apples rather than the box of crackers granted to them.

Food pantries will never have a food supply that enables them to treat everyone fairly.

We are chronically short of popular items like fresh berries, cooking oil, eggs, and pasta sauce. There will always be clients who get some while others don’t. The only option for creating a totally fair system is to store these items until we’ve collected enough for everyone (but how much is everyone? All the clients who attend in a day, a week, a month?)

My definition of what is fair is probably different from yours.

Particularly when it comes to deciding what and how much food someone experiencing hunger should get, what is considered fair varies based on cultural background, country of origin, level of affluence, and many other factors. As the leadership of nonprofits and charities are predominantly composed of white, affluent seniors without lived experience of poverty, their concept of what is fair is probably different from that of the people they serve.

When we institute systems that are one-size-fits-all (even when we adjust for household size, as pantries regularly do), we dismiss the unique needs of our community.

Every single one of my clients will emphatically argue that their needs are different from anyone else’s, and they don’t want the same foods. Increasingly, food justice organizations are working to acknowledge these differences (which is why grocery-style/client choice food pantries are growing in popularity as organizations move away from the pre-boxed model.)

Although I won’t deny that an equitable model allowing clients to take what they need requires more oversight, deliberate management, and thoughtful reflection, accommodating the diversity of needs in our food pantry will always provide more effective support for those seeking assistance. If we are truly committed to ending hunger, we need to demonstrate it by prioritizing the needs of our community over our own comfort and ideas of fairness.

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

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Occasionally, someone pulls up to our food pantry in a shiny, pristine car. There are no Mercedes or Tesla in our parking lot, but a well-maintained car with a bit of chrome stands out. This is something that our volunteers tend to notice immediately, and begin grumbling.

“They don’t need our food.”

“If they can afford that car, then they can afford their own groceries.”

In the U.S., we have a very rigid perspective of what poverty should look like, heavily influenced by suspicions that poverty stems from bad choices rather than systemic problems. A nice car pulling into a food pantry is seen as confirmation of these suspicions that people either are looking to take advantage of the system or made a foolish purchase that forces them to seek food assistance.

I am confident that neither assumption is true.

Poverty and hunger are not chronic conditions. They ebb and flow. Most people who struggle financially also experience periods of relative stability.

On average, Americans live in poverty poverty for about three years before at least temporarily regaining stability, and only a minority experience it for extended periods of time. This doesn’t mean that people are comfortable, but it does mean they are not constantly on the verge of a financial crisis.

When individuals are feeling financially secure, they can treat themselves to a reliable car that makes their life easier.

We all have different ways of treating ourselves, and poverty shouldn’t disqualify someone from practicing self-care. It doesn’t make sense to get rid of that reliable car when we hit hard times just because it doesn’t conform with society’s vision of what poverty looks like.

 Most Americans do not have an emergency fund. That means that all it takes is one major car repair, medical bill, or job loss to upset a comfortable lifestyle. If we believe that everyone deserves to eat, then we need to serve everyone without judgement knowing that the situations which bring them to a food pantry are valid and complex (and also none of our business).

Food pantries and anti-hunger activists should actively engage their community in fighting assumptions which reinforce the stigma and shame of hunger.

Here are three talking points for educating your community on why poverty may not match their vision:

• Although it may be more expensive initially, a well-maintained, quality car will often run better than a dented vehicle with 300,000 miles on it. Why should anyone turn down the opportunity to drive something reliable that will last longer if they have the capability?

We have a food pantry client whose car doesn’t work in reverse, which means every time she visits, we must physically push her car out of the parking lot. If she had the option, should she choose to keep it because it is cheaper than something more functional?

And someone driving a nice car may have borrowed it, it may have been a gift, or the driver may be shopping for someone else who was unable to come to the pantry in person.

• Our pantry has recently started serving many more families using emergency food assistance for the first time. Inflation has depleted the finances of individuals who previously never imagined having to use our services.

• For some people, they will only need to visit a food pantry a couple times before they regain their stability. For other clients, it may take much longer. Either way, most of these people probably don’t identify as poor.

• Everyone deserves nice things. Obviously, what is accessible to an individual changes based on financial situation, but in the same way I will argue that all our clients deserve organic produce, expensive meats, or a cookie that makes them smile, they are equally entitled to own things that bring them joy.

If we aspire to end hunger, it’s essential that we take the time to examine our assumptions about poverty. Do you grumble if you see a houseless individual using a cell phone? Would you feel uncomfortable witnessing SNAP benefits being used to buy a fancy steak? 

What is your objection to someone driving a car they can count on to get them where they need to go?

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

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