Category: Misconceptions about hunger

Do Food Pantry Clients Have the Time to Cook From Scratch?

After a long day of work, there is nothing worse than having to decide what to cook for dinner. If I don’t already have a plan, figuring out how to quickly assemble a meal that is nutritious and appealing based on what’s in the fridge is a challenge. As a perpetually hungry (and often hangry) individual, I hate scrambling to put a meal together last minute.

While I’ve previously discussed the emotional labor of fighting hunger, it’s also important to acknowledge the emotional labor it takes to nourish a household.

Preparing meals for your family requires an enormous amount of thinking and planning, no matter how simple the actual process of cooking may be.

Preparing food isn’t limited to the physical labor of cooking.

Meal planning requires considering personal preferences, nutritional requirements, cooking skills and capacity, and the availability and accessibility of ingredients. The household cook must align household expectations with their budget and resources.

This work is largely invisible, and sharply divided by gender. For people who aren’t the primary cooks of their household (like the men who predominantly manage anti-hunger programs and determine policy), it’s easy to believe that meal prep only encompasses the tasks necessary to safely cook, prepare, and serve dinner.

The challenges of putting together a tasty meal are amplified if you’re a food pantry client, as you likely have little choice or autonomy over the foods and quantities available to you.

One of the primary challenges is that more than half of people facing food insecurity are employed full time. Those who aren’t working full time face significant barriers to doing so, such as disabilities, caregiving responsibilities, or a lack of employment opportunities. To make ends meet, many people work multiple jobs, which means available time for food preparation is extremely limited.

The next challenge is to figure out how to turn eight cans of beans, two cans of tuna, a butternut squash, and a jumbo bag of potato chips into something your household is excited to eat. While I’m sure it can be done, it takes creativity, research, and time to transform food pantry donations into a functional meal. This is a big ask from someone already overextended by the trials of poverty.

Despite the challenges of living with food insecurity, we still haven’t moved away from the unrealistic expectation that people who care about their families cook wholesome, time-intensive meals from scratch, and project that assumption on our emergency food assistance programs.

While we don’t have the option of increasing wages or reducing work hours for our clients, there are steps food pantries can take to ease the burden on our shoppers.

  • Provide foods that accommodate a variety of lifestyles and living situations. Too many of our food pantry clients had little time or capacity for intensive cooking sessions. While I applaud the movement to emphasize fresh, whole foods, this level of food prep may not be accessible for working households. Microwave meals, canned goods, and instant options are essential to accommodate all lifestyles. It’s important to remember that our opinions of what people “should eat” has no impact on what they are able to eat.
  • Bundle. The food that pantries provide is only useful if clients can use it. That means providing food in quantities and partnerships that make it useful. No one eats tomato sauce on its own- partnering it with pasta, chili ingredients, or other pairings ensures that it supports a functional meal. While providing a household with a small can of chicken noodle soup may prevent starvation, it doesn’t relieve the burden of trying to figure out what else the meal requires to make sure everyone’s belly is full. Offer useful quantities and partner with appropriate items when possible.
  • Offer culturally appropriate foods that are familiar to clients. This saves people from having to learn how to prep new foods and convince their family to eat it. (While I’m a fan of encouraging people to try new foods, it’s important to offer it as an option rather than expectation.) Offering cooking classes or taste tests alongside sensitivity training for volunteers may be necessary to ensure they are able to appropriately support clients when shopping.

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

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What Data Should We Ask of Food Pantry Clients?

I once got a phone call at my food pantry from a woman who had recently tried to get help from another pantry in the region. Crying into the phone, she wanted to make a complaint about the volunteer she had worked with, mistaking our pantry as the parent organization.

This woman was trying to get food for the first time from this site but was told because she didn’t have proof of identification for every member of her household, she wasn’t eligible. She became understandably upset, and in the ensuing argument was told she was banned from visiting for a year. She was panicked that her family would go hungry, and frustrated by the excessive demands to qualify for food assistance.

Requiring proof of identification from every member of her household was an excessive and inappropriate expectation. Who carries that kind of information with them? How do they manage that with children in the household? I was frustrated that this happened, but requiring documentation or proof of need is a longstanding tradition in emergency food assistance. Our desire to make sure that people really “deserve” the help motivates demands for proof of income, address, or other evidence that proves a household struggles with hunger.

The more information organizations require of their clients, the more people they deter from participating.

If our goal is to reduce hunger, then this is antithetical to our mission. In many cases, merely the fear or stigma of having to prove one’s need is enough to stop many people from seeking help.

Most food pantries require their clients’ names, birthdays, address, and the names and birthdays of all household members. Sometimes this information is required to determine eligibility (like address for programs who only serve certain zip codes), while others simply need it for their records. Federal programs like TEFAP may also require an income declaration for proof of need.

 When I first started working at one of my food pantries, they required gender as well, for a completely unknown reason (as soon as possible I changed it to asking our shoppers’ pronouns instead.)

Requiring documentation represents an burden for many different reasons. Immigrants, regardless of their immigration status, may be fearful of authority and avoid situations that leave them vulnerable and subject to scrutiny. In addition, too many organizations do not or are unable to translate their documents and signage explaining their requirements, which makes them largely inaccessible to people who don’t read or write in English. Not knowing expectations can be immensely intimidating.

I have also worked with multiple survivors of domestic violence who refused to share even their names out of fear that their abuser might find them. The administrative requirements of food assistance should never outweigh the safety of the people we are trying to serve, but in many cases, this demands making exceptions to existing policy.

Documentation can also be a barrier for people who are houseless, or who don’t have easy access to the necessary paperwork. They may or may not have an ID, and might not carry any other information with them. I’ve also worked with many young adults who were covertly trying to improve their family’s food supply and were therefore unable to access the information they need to get food.

Requiring documentation also increases the responsibilities of staff and volunteers to appropriately manage the information. TEFAP forms must be stored for years, while other intake documents must also be processed and stored while respecting the confidential nature of their contents.

But shortcuts can be equally problematic.

I recently connected with a food pantry that based eligibility on preexisting participation with federal programs like SNAP, WIC, and Social Security. Although it saved them from having to evaluate any other data, it also meant that a) their pantry was deliberately unavailable to populations that couldn’t access federal services and b) implies a greater government connection than often exists, which can be problematic for people fearful of authority or concerned with confidentiality.

How food pantries can be thoughtful about data expectations:

  • Minimize your eligibility requirements and ask for as little information as possible. What information do you really need and why do you need it (for partner reports, grants? Do these partners really need it, or are there alternatives you can offer?)
  • It can be tempting to make your client paperwork look as official and legitimate as possible. But this can increase client fears that their information is being collected by the government or other agencies outside of your organization. Developing less formal-looking paperwork can help.
  • Reassuring clients that we recognize the burden and annoyance of completing any paperwork helps minimize its importance and made it less intimidating. My previous food pantry participated in TEFAP, which meant there was one form that clients had to complete annually (or provide a signature at each visit). The speech my team gave was, “I know this looks super official and scary, but we promise that no one will ever look at this form and it will disappear in a dusty office drawer until we shred it.” This introduction opened up an opportunity to have a comfortable conversation about what we did with the information we collected, and how it was kept confidential.

Eligibility requirements persist in response to the fear that welfare abuse can be prevented through strict oversight and evaluation.

Adding documentation requirements limits service to shoppers who adhere to YOUR version of need. Who is excluded?

After a decade of working in food pantries, I can say with confidence that no one is trying to exploit food assistance. Every step we take to make services more accessible is progress towards ending hunger.

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

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What Can Food Pantries Offer Besides Food?

Do you remember the toilet paper shortage of 2020? I remember cruising the largely empty aisles of my grocery store under signs announcing, “1 package per person,” with strict enforcement at checkout and rampant fears among my community that it wouldn’t be enough.  

It’s an essential supply that we previously took for granted, without which life is significantly more uncomfortable. Toilet paper is also one of the most requested non-food items at many food pantries.

Because food is essential for survival, it makes sense that services prioritize it.

However, that focus can make it easy to forget that there are other nonfood requirements for modern life that many people struggle to access.

Americans tend to have a very narrow view of what poverty looks like. I can’t count the number of times I’ve shared that I work with food pantries, and people assume that my clients are exclusively unemployed and houseless.

Thanks to the myth of the American dream, we are eager to assume that someone who has the capacity to work has the resources to support themselves.

The reality is that having a full-time job is not a guarantee that an individual can afford housing, healthcare, food, and other necessities. While keeping our neighbors nourished is an essential goal, food pantries are also well-positioned to offer support on other household products.

Here are the most important nonfood essentials that food pantries can offer:

Pet Food

Publicize to the community if you can take open bags of pet food.

One of the hardest yet most impactful responsibilities I once had was accepting donations of leftover dog or cat food after a beloved pet passed away. Donors regularly reduced me to tears in the parking lot with stories about their pet, and shared the reassurance they felt knowing the food went to animals in need. We bagged pet food into gallon-sized Ziplock’s, which was not enough to fully support larger animals but was adequate for smaller critters. This interaction offered a unique opportunity for connection and empathy.

Menstrual Hygiene Products

Partner with a local period advocacy group who might have access to menstrual hygiene products for distribution. PLEASE allow your clients to choose the supplies they want rather than just handing them a package or a mixed bag.

Laundry Detergent and Dish Soap

Host a laundry detergent or dish soap-specific drive. Encourage donors to donate these items or funds to purchase these in bulk.

These are essential for dignity, hygiene, and simple practicality, and there aren’t many options for working around their absence. I’m thrilled to have just learned there are entire organizations dedicated to this effort like Each Stitch Counts based in New Jersey.

Diapers

Is there a diaper bank in your community? There are often programs specifically dedicated to diapers, and connecting clients with diapers and wipes is a much-needed resource. Additionally, holding diaper drives for your pantry can be fun and successful.

People often like to donate supplies for newborns, but babies grow fast and there’s not much someone can do with a too-small diaper, so I often encourage donations of larger sizes. I encourage offering diaper exchanges, so people can drop off diapers that are too small or brands that didn’t work for them. Opened packages are often totally fine!

Toilet Paper

It’s cheaper if you buy it in bulk, but too many people can’t meet that upfront cost no matter what the long-term savings are. Although offering a single roll at every visit is inadequate, it can still be an incredibly helpful addition to pantry options.

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

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Why Don’t Single Moms Deserve More Support?

At one of my previous food pantries, we served a woman nearly every week who came to shop with three boys under eight in tow. Cheerful and rambunctious, they behaved expectedly- walking alongside mom quickly devolved into a fast-paced game of tag around the produce table that made us all a little bit nervous. We did our best to keep everyone safe and comfortable but recognized the challenges of running errands with three small children. After waiting in line outside for an hour, it was no surprise they had energy to burn off.

Nearly every time she visited, a volunteer would sidle up to me and comment on how this mom needed to do a better job managing her kids. Not only was she not able to provide them with the food they needed, but she was letting them behave disrespectfully in the pantry!

In the context of a food pantry, rollicking happy children were an indicator of their mother’s inadequacies as a caregiver.

It absolutely would have been easier for everyone- Mom, my pantry staff and volunteers, and other clients if she hadn’t brought her children, but parents rarely have that flexibility. Single parents even less so.

(Today I’m considering the stigma against single moms specifically, but single parents everywhere deal with many of the same barriers.)

Single mothers are a controversial demographic when it comes to welfare and anti-poverty efforts. While society is generally enthusiastic about fighting childhood hunger, we hold much more complex attitudes about their mothers.

Our society has a specific vision of who deserves food assistance and welfare recognized as “the deserving poor.” These are the individuals we believe deserve assistance because they are unable to change their own situation- namely, children and seniors. Unable to participate in the labor market, these two groups are deemed helpless to conditions around them and are therefore deserving of additional aid.

The problem with creating the deserving poor is that it automatically fosters the idea that there is an undeserving poor- people who do have the capacity to escape poverty, if only they try hard enough. This perspective assumes that economic mobility is possible with enough effort (despite ample evidence to the contrary), largely blaming poverty on the individuals living it.

Single mothers fall somewhere in between the deserving and undeserving poor: no one believes that children should go hungry, but our society also is reluctant to support people for choices we disapprove of, and single motherhood is one of those.

Childcare is still primarily viewed as the domain of women, and societal expectations are that mothers meet all their children’s needs. When women aren’t the perfect parent, they’re seen as a failure.

 (Read How the Other Half Eats by Priya Fielding-Singh, PhD for a great analysis of this.)

Distrust of single mothers is also amplified by the concept of the welfare queen. The pervasive myth that women have additional children simply to maximize public benefits colors the support our society is willing to provide. Culturally, we tend to want to punish women for their choice to become a parent rather than lift them up with the support they need.

How can your anti-hunger efforts support single parents?

Design kid friendly pantries. Single parents often have no other option than to take their children shopping. In my wildest dreams, pantries would have a free childcare option or at least a designated play space, but I recognize our world’s not ready for this yet. Baring that, there are child-friendly steps pantries can take:

  • Practice flexibility if you have long lines. Do clients have to stay in their spot in line, or can you switch to a number or lottery system? Any parent of a toddler knows that waiting quietly in a long line (full of anxious, worried, and stressed individuals) can be hard, and some parents may prefer to go hungry than face that challenge with their child.
  • Offer shopping carts with a child seat, not just baskets, to help parents contain small or active children.
  • Maintain a safe space for kids to play. One of my pantries had a bookshelf for donated books that we allowed children to take, and it was not unusual for a parent to have to drag their older child away from a book at the end of their visit. I loved it!
  • Flexible hours– including accessibility during school hours, evenings, and weekends. This makes pantries more available for parents who may need to come when their kids are in school, when another person is able to watch them, or when they have the time and flexibility.

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

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Can We Make Food Pantry Food Delicious?

Several years ago, one of my food pantries received a large donation of spices. We were excited as seasonings are always in short supply, and it was a rarity to offer our neighbors cinnamon, thyme, and turmeric.

Although some of the spices went quickly, most of our clients, who had backgrounds in South America, Eastern Europe, and Asia, were not interested in turmeric.  Cases of it sat in the warehouse as just a few adventurous shoppers chose to give it a taste.

By complete coincidence, this donation occurred just when our pantry was gearing up for an influx of immigrant families arriving from Afghanistan after the fall of their government. We were struggling to assemble a food selection that adhered to Halal requirements and cultural traditions.

Our Afghani shoppers were thrilled with the turmeric. These families were looking to recreate familiar meals made with whole food ingredients after being thrust into a foreign country, and turmeric was an essential component reminding them of home. Even though we didn’t have all the foods they were used to, an abundance of this spice allowed them to recreate familiar flavors anyways. In no time at all, we gave away all our turmeric.

If you’ve ever donated to a food drive before, you’ve likely contemplated what types of foods you think food pantry shoppers might like. Canned fruits and vegetables, boxed potatoes, and dry beans are all likely selections. Nutritional quality is often a primary factor for choosing what foods to donate, recognizing that access to healthy options can be limited for people experiencing food insecurity. High levels of salt, sugar, and fat are popular concerns.

However, those healthy foods don’t always taste very good on their own. When cooking in your own kitchen, you likely cook in olive oil or butter, add a little salt and pepper, and incorporate other seasonings. No matter how healthy you are eating, you (hopefully) add flavor to your meals.

Taste and the value of delicious food are often neglected components of food security.

Too often, the effort to fight hunger stops with acquiring the basic ingredients without a thought given to the final step of transforming food into a meal.

If we want to encourage families to learn to cook and eat together, we need to ensure they have the tools to do so. Spices are essential for making our food enjoyable, practicing cultural traditions, and evoking memories.

After working with thousands of food pantry clients, I have learned that most people know what they need to do to eat healthy; they simply lack the resources to do so. Although we’ve made progress increasing access to fresh fruits and veggies, it’s still hard to cook collard greens without oil, or to assemble a curry without turmeric or cumin. Even the healthiest eater is unlikely to eat a dry sweet potato unless they have no other options.

Data shows that adding spices and seasoning to meals enhances flavor while increasing nutrient accessibility. But spices are some of the most expensive components of a meal, which means many people experiencing food insecurity can’t afford to buy them.

Why are people living in poverty condemned for not eating healthily when they are denied access to the ingredients that make a meal palatable?

It’s practically a cliché to condemn people experiencing poverty for eating luxurious foods like steak or lobster. But in doing so, we’ve unintentionally reinforced the idea that this population doesn’t deserve to eat things that are delicious. Certainly, steak and lobster are regularly treated as inappropriate because of their cost, but also because they are delicious. People experiencing hunger aren’t considered deserving of delicious food.

I emphatically believe that it’s possible to eat healthy food that also tastes wonderful, but only when we have the tools necessary to succeed. We can build a world where we all have access to healthy food, and meals that leaves us content to sit at the table for just one more pleasurable bite.

How do we build anti-hunger spaces celebrating delicious food?

  • Spice drives. Let your donor community know the importance of making food taste good by encouraging everyone to donate spices and seasonings. The more variety, the better!
  • Taste tests. Prepare meals using only the options available at your organization. This is a great opportunity for staff and volunteers to experience the reality of working with limited options. Celebrate when you have the ingredients you need to make something truly delicious, but don’t shy away from discussing why it doesn’t taste delicious, and the challenges this raises for your shoppers.
  • Purchase seasonings. Food banks and pantries are increasingly making their own food purchases. Find out the spices in highest demand at your organization and consider adding them to your purchased foods. A little can go a long way and can help other staple ingredients taste better and be more versatile.  

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

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Can We Solve Hunger and Food Waste with the Same Solution?

“Clean your plate- don’t you know there are children starving in Africa?”

Even if your parents didn’t say it, I’m sure you’re familiar with this prompt to finish your meal instead of throwing it away. It’s meant to guilt us into appreciating what we have through an awkward celebration of abundance in comparison to the scarcity experienced by others.

This phrase also feels like it could be the potential origins of the theory that reducing food waste is an effective strategy for fighting food insecurity. In addition, it is one of the most common misconceptions I encounter about hunger.

A growing global population and fears about the impacts of climate change on agriculture have prompted a movement focused on the reduction of food waste. By keeping food out of the garbage, we reduce our own consumption and theoretically add to the supply available for others while minimizing our contribution to climate change. Salvaged food is distributed for free to people who can’t afford to buy their own.

If there weren’t enough food for everyone, reducing waste and redistributing the excess would be a logical solution. This idea has facilitated the growth and development of food banks, who have an essential and positive impact on their communities. But wanting food shortages to be a root cause of hunger doesn’t make it a reality.

 While we absolutely should worry about climate change’s impacts on agriculture and reducing our contributions to the landfill, we do not have a food shortage. Reducing food waste is an essential component of a sustainable food system but not a magical solution to hunger.

I am a passionate advocate for sustainable agriculture and responsible consumption, as well as food banking, but this framing fails to capture the complexity of food insecurity.

Hunger is primarily caused by a lack of access to food. People experiencing hunger can’t afford it, can’t physically access it, or don’t have the ability to use it.

Reducing food waste in itself does not improve physical access, doesn’t make it more affordable (for people in need, although there are significant financial advantages for corporations to donate), and rarely increases an individual’s capacity to use it. Redirecting it to food pantries does improve financial access but doesn’t guarantee that the physical location is available to who need it most or ensure that it is nutritionally or culturally appropriate for the community.

Food pantries also face a constant struggle of determining whether their food selection promotes respect or disdain for their clients. Too often, the push to reduce food waste leads organizations to distribute produce that is wilted and mushy, dented cans with illegible labels, or dairy products long past their expiration with questionable edibility.

Whether or not the food is perfectly good or rotting in its package, using food waste as an anti-hunger tool also perpetuates harmful stigmas about food insecurity and food assistance.

Our cultural conviction that it’s possible to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” if you just work hard enough means that we often view poverty as an indicator of laziness or personal failure. Framing people who are food insecure in this way justifies providing them with food otherwise destined for the garbage, and subtly reinforces the idea that they deserve less because of their inadequacies.

In an ideal world, everyone would have the resources they need to access their own food. But recognizing we still depend upon the essential services of food banks and pantries, here’s how we can make sure we’re still uplifting, rather than oppressing, our clientele while using salvaged resources.

  • Does your food demonstrate respect for your shoppers? Are you giving it away because it’s functional, or because your volunteers didn’t want to toss it? The fact that clients take it does not mean they’re excited about- it just implies they have no other option. You may need to start throwing out more food than you want to to elevate the quality of what’s offered. Respecting your shoppers needs to be the number one priority of every anti-hunger organization.  
  • Are your donors using you as their waste disposal? Are you receiving food that should have already been discarded, and they’ve just offloaded it from their garbage to yours? It is uncomfortable to correct donors, but what a waste of your time, energy and resources! By distributing poor quality food, you’re likely offloading the garbage onto your shoppers just as your donors did to you. Make sure donors know and follow your standards, with an emphasis on human dignity.
  • How do you talk about your use of food waste? Without careful navigation, emphasizing how much food is salvaged can reinforce the public perception that it’s ok for people experiencing hunger to eat garbage. Consider focusing on “food rescue” or “food surplus” rather than “food waste.” Food pantries usually have a significant cadre of volunteers whose mission is environmental rather than social, and it is important that you educate them on the nuances of this distinction. There is room for them to support the environment while still emphasizing that everyone deserves good quality food no matter their capacity to purchase it.

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

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Why Kindness Doesn’t Fight Hunger

A media source once visited one of my food pantries and requested interviews with some of our shoppers. My favorite moment was when a client told the interviewer with great enthusiasm, “They’re not just nice to me- they’re nice to EVERYONE!”

This resonated because I regularly heard stories about the experience our clients had at other food pantries- and kindness seemed in short supply. In most cases it was not that volunteers or staff at other organizations were explicitly rude- it was that those seeking emergency food assistance are sensitive to judgement, disingenuity, and prejudice. There is already such stigma against using emergency food assistance internalized by both recipients and distributors, that without conscious effort, it’s easy to commit microaggressions even while acting kind and welcoming.

No one wants to go to the food pantry.

I have never met someone who preferred to be handed discarded, cast-off, or expired food at a food pantry over having autonomy over their own grocery shopping.

Of course, many people are grateful for the much-needed help in feeding their families, but even the most dignified food pantry experience isn’t better than the power to choose what and how much your family wants to eat without restriction. (And of course, no one needs to be grateful for food.)

This reality influences every food pantry visit. Recognizing that no one wants to be there, it’s essential for organizations to ensure that they’re sensitive to the baggage that accompanies such a task.

While institutional policies impact the food pantry experience, volunteer attitudes and actions carry the greatest weight when it comes to building a safe space for people experiencing hunger. Having volunteers truly committed to compassion, kindness, and empathy is the most effective way to establish a dignified food pantry environment but is no simple achievement.

Even when volunteers are kind and welcoming, it can be easy to unconsciously reflect problematic attitudes through their actions. By building respectful foundational attitudes, you can help your volunteers practice empathy at every shift.

Assume good intentions.

Remind volunteers that we never know the whole story of why someone is at the food pantry- and it’s none of our business. If your community embraces the idea that people only come who are in need, then it’s easy to make everyone feel welcome without judgement. If volunteers (or staff) think people are there to exploit the system, this reflects in conversations, actions, and policy. Any concerns voiced should be an opportunity for discussing barriers to food security and building respect.

A client arriving in a fancy car may have recently experienced a catastrophic job loss or medical bill that leaves them broke, even though their car screams wealth. Expensive belongings may have been donated, or speak to previous stability, or maybe were all that was grabbed while fleeing domestic violence.

Remembering to be open-minded about the circumstances that bring someone to the food pantry creates a space free of judgement, which will help visitors feel more welcome. Volunteers who can’t adopt this mindset may need to find a different opportunity.

Food is a gift.

Just like any other gift given, the giver has no authority over how it is used. With all the work that goes in to sourcing and distributing food for emergency services, it’s easy to feel possessive over how it’s used. But if we maintain the assumption that everyone who visits a food pantry does so out of need, we need to relinquish the compulsion to control how the food is used.

We’re still building food security if the food is shared with a neighbor, or served at a church luncheon, or stashed in the back of a cupboard untouched for a future emergency. For pantries that are without limits, this attitude can also help check judgements about how much people take. Once it’s in someone’s cart, we can appreciate the hard work we put in to get it there and celebrate that someone will eat well tonight. It doesn’t matter who, or what, or how much.

Services are for shoppers.

I once had a week-long argument with a coworker who was adamant that our food pantry was a volunteer-centered organization. They argued that clients were the vehicle we used to provide an experience for our volunteers, which justified turning away any client who negatively influenced this experience.

The fact that services should focus on fighting hunger seems obvious, but all direct-service anti-hunger organizations wrestle with this conundrum every day. An explicit commitment to serving the community needs to be regularly revisited to ensure that policies focus on the needs of shoppers. This doesn’t mean that volunteers or staff are neglected, but their needs should be considered in a different light.

Everyone knows the importance of being kind at a food pantry, but establishing an atmosphere that truly welcomes people without judgement or stigma requires a much stronger foundation. While established a clear mission and supporting policies can help, this is also the kind of foundation that can be built guerilla-style by a single individual ready to make a change. Conversations uplifting each of these tenets can slowly permeate the organizational culture and build an environment that is more genuine and welcoming, and therefore more effective at fighting hunger.

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

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Fight Hunger with Fair Wages for Womxn

It’s counterintuitive, but the most effective anti-hunger programs rarely prioritize food. Instead, they focus on poverty alleviation.  Policies that don’t directly fight hunger, like paid maternity leave, paid sick time, and affordable childcare, are some of the most important opportunities we have for ending food insecurity. 

However, we are failing to address a major economic rift between Americans that continues to plague families and individuals regardless of social or wealth status: the gender wage gap.

This March ‘24, Senior Economist Elise Gould at the Economic Policy Institute had the dubious honor of reminding us of the little that has been accomplished in the last 30 years to improve the earning power disparity between genders. 

It’s hard to see this report, to be reminded that despite how hard I work, as an American womxn I can expect to make at least 16% less income than my male counterparts, worse yet as I chose a career in non-profit.   

At the risk of triggering any “TERFs” reading my content, I advocate broadening the gender pay gap argument to include womxn, to be inclusive of trans and gender nonconforming individuals, people of all racial backgrounds, and anyone else who identifies under this umbrella. Compensation and discrimination are core to food insecurity for all marginalized communities, but today I’m examining how this relates to gender.

It’s essential to recognize that all womxn, no matter their individual identity or situation, face discrimination with serious financial implications that impacts their food security.

Disparities in compensation increase for people of color, LBGTQ+, and those with disabilities. We can’t effectively fight hunger without calling out these stark truths.

Gould’s report for the EPI reminds us that not only are womxn unable to capture as great a proportion of what society reaps, but they are also disproportionately impacted by economic shocks and the impacts of poverty.  In a challenging job market with rising inflation, the loss of sixteen cents or more per dollar adds up to an impactful shortage. For many womxn, this is the difference between food security and not knowing where their next meal is coming from.

Because womxn are predominantly the caregivers, cooks, and shoppers of a household, they are often presented as the face of food insecurity, but focusing on the experience makes it easier to ignore the root causes.

Paying womxn less money than men is a primary cause of food insecurity.

In the role of caregiver, womxn are often forced to choose jobs that offer flexibility to accommodate the needs of their family, which generally pay lower wages. In addition, workplaces deliberately pay mothers less money than womxn without children.

Lower expectations of caregiving and blatant shows of sexism offer men more flexibility to pursue jobs with higher wages, and even reward them for having families. 

Our cultural consciousness often assumes that people experiencing hunger, especially those who are employed, just need to work harder or find a better-paying job to enjoy success.

As a society that proudly embraces the idea of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” identifying a lack of effort as the primary cause of poverty is a comfortable explanation that demands no collective action.

But this justification weakens once you take a closer look at the demographics of hunger. Out of all the people experiencing food insecurity globally, 60% are women (data is a little murkier for womxn, but it’s safe to assume the number only goes up). Numbers are similar nationally. There’s no rational argument that womxn just need to work harder.

Gould’s EPI report ends with a reminder despite little narrowing of the gap in the last thirty years, programs like universal healthcare, affordable or free childcare, and paid leave are proven to make an enormous difference in how women are able to allocate their disproportionately low wages. Although I’m passionate about changing our approach to hunger primarily within the field, it’s important to recognize that we can’t make impactful change until we eliminate the gender compensation gap.

Major thanks to Kern Herron for his significant 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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Want Food Assistance? Go Broke First

If someone is experiencing hunger, they must be completely broke, right?

The idea that people seeking emergency food assistance have no money is a perspective I regularly encounter in the world of food banking and social services and amongst the public. If you have any money at all, society deems you undeserving of food assistance.  

Fueled by a collective conviction that people experiencing hunger aspire to exploit the system, anti-hunger policies reinforce assumptions with restrictions that prevent us from effectively fighting hunger.

Emergency food assistance resources such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) require participants to declare income and financial assets below a certain threshold determined by federal and state policies.

Benefits are reduced or halted when recipients exceed these limitations, intending to prevent people from taking advantage of resources they don’t need, assuming they should deplete their own resources first. These policies perpetuate the idea that people must be completely broke to deserve food assistance. (Most states have implemented a policy workaround to these limitations called Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility, but the paradigm in favor of restrictions remains.)

A serious consequence of setting limits is that it prevents individuals living in poverty from preparing for financial emergencies. As studies repeatedly demonstrate, most Americans do not have the resources to weather an unexpected $1,000 expense without hardship.

All it takes is one unforeseen medical bill, car accident, or housing transition to deplete one’s savings. Limitations on assets ensure that families who have the capacity to save a little every month are disincentivized from doing so, because it’s unlikely that savings can sustain them as effectively as SNAP or TEFAP.

For those who have the capacity to save, the federal asset limit for SNAP is $2,750, beyond which a household may lose their food assistance. It is usually far safer in the short term for a household struggling with food security to stop building savings than to relinquish SNAP benefits.

Some of my readers may react with disgust at the idea that an individual can have nearly $3,000 and still receive food assistance. That seems like far too much money to need help. Most Americans have far less.

Our society believes that people must be utterly broke, without a penny to their name, to deserve social assistance. We demand that they deplete their own resources before utilizing any others. But this is an incredibly destructive attitude that perpetuates hunger.

Fears of abuse are internalized by the people receiving assistance as well as those implementing it.

At my food pantry, I used to regularly encounter first-time clients who confessed that their cupboards were empty, or that they hadn’t eaten that day, or had been subsisting on a single daily meal. “I didn’t want to take resources away from someone who needed it more” was a constant rationalization for postponing seeking help.

When we require that people are empty before we fill them up, we deliberately increase their barriers to achieving stability and security.

It also breeds a perverse sense of competition. If there is always someone hungrier than you out there, do you ever really deserve help?

Demanding that people living in poverty burn through their savings before receiving SNAP or shopping at a food pantry leaves them in a vulnerable position, while providing our neighbors with abundant and dignified food resources before they spend their last dollar is far more likely to ensure that they remain food secure, housed, and healthy.

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

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You Can’t Solve Hunger With Grocery Stores

In 2011, I moved from Oregon to a rural, isolated region in eastern Montana. My AmeriCorps position was tasked with helping build a school garden in a neighboring town and to explore the possibility of developing a cooperatively run grocery store in the community next door. Both these tiny towns had high poverty and hunger rates, but the one lacking a grocery store faced some serious challenges. With less than three hundred aging residents, this community was approximately thirty miles from the nearest small grocery store, and eighty miles from a department store. My workplan proposed assessing the feasibility of bringing a grocery store to this “food desert.”

At the time, eliminating food deserts was a trending solution for fighting hunger. Spurred on by Michelle Obama’s healthy food initiatives, the movement assumed that distance was a primary barrier to healthy foods for these communities. Her campaign advocated for bringing grocery stores and retailers of fresh produce to communities experiencing hunger to facilitate access and consumption of healthy foods, to the benefit of children and communities alike.

Over the past decade, we’ve learned that hunger in low access communities is far more complex than simply being able to get to a grocery store. Although physical access is an important barrier to consider, it is not necessarily the one most significantly influencing hunger rates.

Although still in occasional use, the phrase “food desert” has fallen out of favor, and for good reason.

The term itself is misleading. The official definition of a food desert is a region that is more than one mile from a grocery store in an urban setting or more than ten miles in a rural area. Rather than recognizing the assets available, the phrase defines a community based on what it lacks. A desert conjures up an image of a desolate wasteland, bereft of resources. This paradigm disempowers communities by ignoring the power and resources they do have, and glossing over the fact that what they lack is determined by external influences.

Another reason the term is no longer regularly used is because it recognizes that a desert is a naturally occurring ecosystem, whereas a food desert is a deliberately manufactured setting.

Choices are made at every level of administration and government to determine whether a region gets a grocery store, or a farmers’ market, or nothing but fast-food restaurants. The creation of a food desert is anything but passive, and it’s rarely a decision that residents have influence over.   

In the 1980s, activist Karen Washington introduced the term “food apartheid” to describe communities lacking adequate food access more accurately. It references the racial disparities of hunger highlighted by redlining, segregation, and discrimination.

Over the last ten years, the food justice community has improved our appreciation of terminology which explicitly recognizes that hunger and poverty is never an accident. Too much of our society’s understanding of food access focuses on individual responsibility, but adopting language that uplifts the systemic nature of hunger is an essential step to helping evolve our cultural paradigm. Calling out apartheid is a powerful and impactful way to engage with the systemic nature of hunger.

In the Montana community where I worked, surveys revealed that most residents wouldn’t shop at a store in town unless its prices were cheaper than those of the major retail chain eighty miles away. Residents recognized that the prices for a local grocery store, no matter how well managed, would never be as low as the supercenter even considering the price of fuel to get there, and they simply couldn’t afford it.

Introducing a local store would have had minimal to no impact on residents.

This explicitly demonstrated that income and cost were the greatest barriers to food security for this small town. Calling it a food desert oversimplified these challenges, and ignores the fact that poverty prevented people from shopping or eating how they like. Montana’s high population of Indigenous People, and economic forces that produce the ultra-cheap, exploitive, centralized supercenter grocery model, absence of living wages or healthy retirement accounts, ensured that this town remained food insecure.

Calling it a food desert prompts solutions that bring resources to the area that don’t empower residents, while confronting food apartheid makes us address the reality that hunger can’t be solved without systemic change.

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

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Why is College Hunger a Joke?

Eating nothing but ramen is often considered a rite of passage for college students.

Young adults heading off to school are gifted care packages stuffed with ramen in various flavors, and are taught to expect that these cheap, nutritionally bereft meals are the responsible way to survive a tight budget. Poor nutrition and limited meals are deemed just part of the experience.

The idea of young adults living on ramen is so normalized that it is often treated as a joke.

How did we get here?

If you imagine the stereotypical demographic of someone experiencing hunger in the US, what do they look like?

My guess is you envisioned a senior or a single mother with children. Those are the two demographics consistently portrayed as the most “deserving” of food assistance.

Because seniors and children are more vulnerable to conditions around them, anti-hunger programs have long prioritized uplifting these populations. As a result of this focus, 7% of American seniors were food insecure in 2021 (the most recent data I found.) Approximately 8% of households with children experience food insecurity.

In comparison, on average, 12.8% of the American population is food insecure.

Hunger rates for children and seniors, although still unacceptably high, are low relative to other demographics. That is specifically because targeted efforts are successful. Programs like Meals on Wheels and the National School Lunch Program effectively reduce hunger for these populations.

In contrast to seniors and children, in 2020 approximately 34% of college students were food insecure (although other reports regularly place that number closer to 50%.) This high hunger rate is often a surprise- we tend to stereotype college student as comfortably supported and funded by their parents. But this is no longer the reality.

The demographics of college student have changed. Since the Great Recession in particular, attendance at community college has grown, the age of the average student has increased, their responsibilities outside of school are greater, and they have less external support.

Considering the exorbitant cost of tuition and books on top of paying rent, childcare and utilities, it should be no surprise that college students are left with few resources to buy food. But because our culture has normalized and even romanticized student hunger, organized efforts and policies to combat it are lacking.

Recognizing that targeted approaches reduce hunger, we need to improve food access for college students. Generalized tactics only support the populations already most empowered with the strongest access, while addressing demographics with the greatest barriers offers the most opportunity for impact.

Because of stereotypes and dismissive attitudes, college students may be disinclined to seek help but also face limited access to transportation, cooking facilities, or juggle inconsistent schedules that make it hard to visit a food pantry. A solution that works for a working parent or a resident of a shelter may not work for a student. To end student hunger, we need more and stronger policies specifically recognizing the needs of this demographic. Anti-hunger programs of all types need to consider how accessible they are for college students.

We are failing students by fostering a culture that permits, and even jokes about, student food insecurity. No one learns well without a nourishing, healthy diet, no matter their age.

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

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Do Food Pantry Clients Deserve to Make Their Own Choices?

“Is it okay if I take two cans of beans today?” a food pantry shopper asked me recently as I was volunteering at one of my favorite local food pantries.

“You can actually take as many as you like- this whole room is unlimited,” I was happy to respond. The shopper’s eyes grew big, and they grabbed two more cans- totaling four of the kidney beans, and excitedly moved down the line. Other shoppers who were clearly regulars moved more confidently, some bypassing the canned goods entirely while others took several flats of the beans in my section. I estimate we averaged about three cans of each item per household for the day, although amounts ranged wildly among individuals.

Allowing this freedom of choice for shoppers is a radically controversial practice in the food banking community. There is an archaic, unsubstantiated fear that food pantry shoppers (and welfare recipients in general), are always seeking to exploit the system.

Setting limits on foods is often considered essential to protect from abuse. This attitude is based on the fundamental belief that food insecurity is a personal failing- that America is the land of opportunity where anyone can succeed with enough determination- and that poverty results from poor judgement, moral weakness, or a lack of effort.

This attitude justifies the strict policies that structure American anti-hunger programs.

Despite the rarity of welfare abuse, every conversation I initiate on the subject inevitably produces someone arguing with conviction that any misuse of welfare is intolerable, and we need stricter controls to prevent it. They’ve internalized the notion that welfare recipients have poor judgement which led them to poverty and need careful supervision to keep them on the right track.

This argument reinforces my belief that the fundamental problem with America’s anti-hunger culture is not that we’re short of resources, but that we have developed a system that focuses on punitive action and mistrust instead of solving the problem.

The focus on welfare abuse is the impetus for policies like time limits and work requirements for SNAP, and quantity and attendance limits at food pantries.

Rather than focusing on meeting the need or ending hunger, anti-hunger policies limit access to resources and deliberately ensure that they’re inadequate.

Arguments in favor of strengthening these limitations are justified by concerns about money wasted- that misused funds are lost opportunities to support those who “truly need it.” However, this argument doesn’t hold up. It’s not really about the money.

If we’re worried about everyone meeting their responsibilities when it comes to government funding, why does the discussion focus on welfare? There are hundreds of other examples of “wasted” federal funds with much higher price tags.

For example, wealthy Americans may deprive the US of up to $175 billion dollars a year in tax evasion. I have yet to hear someone concerned about welfare fraud express any frustration about rich people abusing the system, even though the impact is significantly higher than a few misspent SNAP dollars.

Why do we treat the person with an EBT card with more suspicion than we do the person driving a Lamborghini?

Fundamentally, our national consciousness views poverty as an indicator of immorality, and by institutionalizing this conviction, we’ve hobbled ourselves in the fight against hunger.

Limiting anti-hunger resources both perpetuates and reinforces the idea that people experiencing hunger are corrupt and looking to exploit the system. This is why we see discomfort with the idea that people in poverty have access to all the food they need. We still believe they haven’t “earned” it.

Anti-hunger organizations at every level need to examine their policies to see where they have internalized and institutionalized the attitude that people facing food insecurity can’t be trusted. Until our focus is on ending hunger instead of enforcing our narrow idea of morality, we’ll never be able to solve this problem.

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

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We Can’t End Hunger By Improving Production

Hunger has always been a part of the human experience, and we are largely conditioned to assume it is unavoidable. But as technology improves, networks grow, and our understanding of the world evolves, it becomes increasingly apparent that it is not a foregone inevitability.

Trending solutions for fighting hunger often focus on improving agricultural production and reducing food waste. Considering the growing impacts of climate change, the issues of production and conservation certainly deserve attention, but these solutions fail to address the real barriers to ending hunger.

Hunger is a distribution problem, which means we need to address food access rather than food supply.

We are failing in the distribution of resources. Baring a major disaster, people with wealth always have the means to purchase the food they need. The cost of food may rise astronomically, or it may drop to more accessible levels, but wealth insulates against scarcity.

Individuals and communities living in poverty don’t have the resources to overcome these barriers. If they had the resources to access food, then they would no longer be food insecure.

Hunger isn’t a food problem.

Some people face greater barriers than others in accessing food, such as higher transportation costs, greater storage challenges, or culturally specific needs, but all these barriers can be overcome with money. None of these obstacles result directly from a food shortage or high rates of food waste. We lack systems that facilitate food access for everyone, both nationally and globally.

Food distribution is complicated, because food is perishable and there is a limited amount of time that it can be stored, shipped, and distributed before it spoils.  Some parts of the country (and world) are in close proximity to agricultural production which fosters affordable prices and culturally appropriate foods. This makes it simple to get the food people need. Other regions experience greater scarcity, which means residents depend on food traveling greater distances. This increases the cost and makes it more vulnerable to disturbances.

This is why the food justice movement places so much importance on food sovereignty- on empowering people to have ownership over their food system to ensure it meets their needs best and minimizes the risk of external disruption.

Food sovereignty does not demand increasing agricultural production. Instead, it recognizes that empowering people with ownership over their food choices is the best way to build individual and communal health.

Food is an intensely personal choice, and expression of individuality. Every individual, family, community, and culture have their own preferences when it comes to culinary traditions, nutritional needs, and celebration. We are our healthiest and most empowered when we have access to the foods that are a part of our identity.

This is another reason why increasing agricultural production does not solve hunger; mass-produced crops are not often the ones that a community craves. Bringing more corn or wheat to a community may briefly alleviate starvation, but does little to empower health, celebrate cultural traditions, or build food autonomy. When a community has influence and power over its food choices, it can ensure its options are right for everyone.

Increasing the food supply is an easy go-to answer to ending hunger, but the reality is that it completely ignores the root causes of food insecurity.  Without addressing the inaccessibility of our food supply, increasing it only ensures that those who have food will have more, and those who don’t have access will continue to go hungry.

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

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Can You Find Fun in the Kitchen When You’re Food Insecure?

One of my regular food pantry clients once came up to me the moment she walked in the door and shouted, “I LOVE BRUSSELS SPROUTS!”

She told me that she had never had them before but we had an abundance the last time she came to the pantry, so she decided to give them a try. It turned out she was a big fan; she had just never had the opportunity to taste them. Every time since, she would load up on these oft-maligned veggies.  

Our society is eager to condemn people experiencing hunger for eating unhealthy foods. With the prevalent assumption that people experience hunger because of poor judgement, it’s easy to assume that this applies to their food choices as well. This motivates many anti-hunger programs to focus on making decisions for people experiencing food insecurity, like what foods they should and shouldn’t have access to.

We see this attitude perpetuated in regular proposals to increase restrictions on foods purchased with SNAP dollars, in a misguided attempt to force people to eat healthier. SNAP is already inadequate, so this restriction reduces available options without addressing any of the limitations that already exist, like high costs of healthy foods.

The reality is, the only way we can empower people to eat better quality food and to try new things is to give them the capacity to experiment and take risks. (On another day we will also examine the need for time to cook, which means not having to work three jobs; and having a functional kitchen, which means safe and affordable housing.)

We can fight hunger by giving everyone room in their food budget for failure.

Even the most accomplished cooks occasionally make meals that aren’t winners, and every parent knows that their kids will sometimes refuse even the most perfectly prepared meal.

There is security in buying the foods that you know your family enjoys. With a too-tight food budget, it is an unnecessary risk to buy something that your family might not eat. When money is short, it can’t be wasted.

The client who loved Brussels sprouts had four hungry teenagers at home, so she had to maximize her food budget to ensure everyone had enough to eat. Why would she risk spending money on Brussels sprouts that those kids might refuse, or that she might not like, when she already was struggling to keep everyone fed?

But offering Brussels sprouts at the food pantry gave her room to take risks. There were no trade-offs if her family didn’t want to eat them- only a lesson learned.

If we really want to empower people experiencing food insecurity to eat healthier and try new foods, then we need to facilitate the conditions that allow risk-taking.

Children, and people of all ages, often need several exposures to a new food before they start to like it. That requires the capacity to serve it, and have it rejected multiple times before it is accepted. For someone who struggles to afford every bite, this is a nearly impossible risk.

Although food pantries are an inadequate response to hunger, this is one area where they offer opportunity. When clients are empowered to shop for themselves with as few restrictions as possible, there’s room to try something new. There’s no risk if their child refuses to eat the new vegetable, or it turns out the whole family hates that flavor of sauce. They can experiment with tofu just to say they tried it and see for themselves whether Brussels sprouts really deserve their reputation.

While health should absolutely be a priority in anti-hunger work, it’s important that we not lose sight of all the nuances that go into creating an environment where people can eat what’s right for their bodies, and not just what fits within their budget.

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

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Why Shouldn’t All Students Eat Lunch?

I am a 2023-24 FoodCorps Alumni Advocacy Lead, and am working to increase engagement on school food policies at the local and national level.

As the Oregon representative, I am writing a short blog series on local opportunities for supporting stronger, healthier food policies in schools. Oregon’s short legislative session this February revolves around the budget, and legislators have an opportunity to positively impact students’ food access by moving us closer to implementing full Universal School Meals. This second post of the series explains the value and importance of this program. Read the first post on Summer EBT here.

Look up any photo or illustration intended to convey hunger in the U.S., and the chances are high that it includes a child or a senior. This is due to our societal conviction that people need to earn the right to food.  Because they are considered helpless to change their situation, children who are at their parents’ mercy and seniors who live on a fixed income are consistently determined deserving of food assistance.

Despite the pervasiveness of this idea, it should be surprising and disturbing that childhood anti-hunger efforts are often met with nearly as much scorn as any other demographic. In 2024, many states hope to move forward on policies implementing universal school meals, and already politicians and opponents are gearing up for battle.    

When the pandemic hit in 2020 and hunger needs skyrocketed, lawmakers made the dramatic move to implement universal school meals, empowering all public-school children to eat lunch, whether they had the capacity to pay for it or not.

This move was hugely effective in ensuring that millions of children ate even when their families’ lost jobs, saw reduced wages, faced illness, and experienced the grief and chaos that accompanied the first years of the pandemic. This was a policy decision that significantly influenced hunger rates across the US, made even more visible now with their expiration.

For those of us working in the arena of childhood hunger, this is baffling.

Abundant evidence demonstrates that school meals are a powerful tool for childhood health, and education. The conditions to qualify for free or reduced-price meals, including the simple administrative requirements, along with the stigma of food assistance, are often powerful deterrents from participation. Universal school meals solve both problems.

If the American attitude around hunger is that only those who deserve it should receive help, and that children are deserving of that support, then why is there an active push against this policy?

Certainly, budgets and cost of the program are major sticking points, but one of the biggest concerns regularly cited is that universal school meals are universal, which risks some children receiving a free meal even if they don’t need it. And that is enough for opponents to decide the whole policy should be scuttled.

There are few instances that provide such a clear illustration of the attitude that someone needs to earn or deserve food. Objections are couched in the idea that assistance needs to be “fair,” because otherwise it will be exploited. Opponents prefer that hungry children have reduced access to a free lunch rather than risk children who don’t need it benefiting from this program.

Progress will come from changing the ways we think and speak about hunger.

Advocates have made headway by simply changing the language we use. “Free” meals have transitioned to “universal.” Opponents were slightly more strongly opposed to the idea that the undeserving might receive something for free than everyone getting to participate.

The logistics of implementing Universal School Meals are complex and vary state by state. Currently, nine states have a policy in place with several more seeking to implement or improve access, including Oregon.

If you are an Oregon resident and haven’t already, please send a note to your representative letting them know it’s important to you that Oregon children have the food they need to succeed in school!

Send a message to your representative

If you live elsewhere, it’s worthwhile researching where your state is in the process and looking for opportunities to change how we think, and how we publicly talk about hunger and who deserves to eat.

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

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Are You Really Fighting Hunger if Your Staff Can’t Afford Food?

At the very first food pantry I ever worked at, our parent organization (one of the biggest nonprofits in the region) was enthusiastic and vocal about prioritizing the client experience. I was excited to partner on this mission, until I learned that this focus on client services was achieved at the expense of staff. Our leaders were adamant that the organization could only afford the most minimal wages and benefits to ensure maximum support for our clients. Because I could not afford groceries on this wage, I became a client at my own food pantry.

Although this happened over a decade ago, it is a pattern I have seen repeated at every food pantry I’ve worked with since. Full-time staff members unable to support themselves or their family on their wages become clients of their own services, which the organization provides without a second thought.

Can you really be an anti-hunger advocate if you’re not willing to make sacrifices for the mission? This attitude is pervasive, and perpetuates a culture that actively inhibits people from thriving while doing this work.

Why is food insecurity accepted within anti-hunger organizations?

American society has narrow attitudes about nonprofits. The belief persists that nonprofit employees should do the work out of the goodness of their hearts rather than for the money.

I once had a Board member brag that our organization paid staff in “heart” to make up for low wages, as if that was an achievement to be celebrated that employees would appreciate.

Paying individuals less than a living wage is a primary cause of food insecurity.

Whether or not money is a motivating factor for nonprofit professionals, it does not mean that we are somehow exempt from paying rent, buying gasoline, or the rising cost of groceries.

When organizations advocating for food justice perpetuate food insecurity, it should throw serious doubt on their commitment. Denying employees the resources to buy their own food while employed at an anti-hunger institution demonstrates a perversely performative interest in fighting hunger.

While every organization benefits from leadership who knows what it’s like to be food insecure, we should not tolerate those that force lived experience upon their employees.

Food banks and pantries who recognize hunger as a systemic problem rather than an individual responsibility are slowly beginning to demonstrate it by working towards institutionalizing living wages.

This is not a simple or easy change. Nonprofit culture uplifts and celebrates low overhead costs and strong client services, an attitude deeply internalized by funders. My previous food pantry regularly received donations specifically allocated for food to ensure that it was spent on clients rather than staff. But this is short-sighted. Who do donors anticipate will do the work if no one should be paid?

Most nonprofits already lean heavily on volunteers, and have paid staff for the jobs that require additional expertise, reliability, or confidentiality. The nonprofit field is one place where these professional individuals are regularly degraded for seeking a comfortable wage that appreciates their skills.

Developing effective solutions to social ills requires that we have the most creative, passionate, and enthusiastic people working on the problem. But the nonprofit field as it currently exists offers weak incentives for attracting or retaining these individuals.

Ending hunger is a complicated and multi-faceted challenge. Amidst the complexity, it’s easy to ignore how we treat the people doing the work. Paying anti-hunger advocates a living wage requires changing priorities, educating funders, and adjusting budgets. But the long-term implications are higher retention rates, improved productivity, stronger competition, and one less client waiting in line at the food pantry.

Next steps:

Check out some resources for starting these conversations from the Next Shift, a campaign encouraging anti-hunger organizations to examine internal processes and attitudes about social justice parallel to their external goals.

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

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How We Get Started Solving Hunger

Hunger has long been a part of the human experience. Throughout history, our ancestors endured starvation enough that our physiology adapted to withstand periods of abundance and of scarcity, which is why we struggle so in our current calorie-rich environment. Despite the abundance of food in our world today, hunger remains so normalized that eliminating it tends to be added to lists of aspirational-but-unobtainable goals like world peace and time travel.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) framework for food security identifies four essential conditions necessary for an individual, community, and nation to be food secure- access, availability, knowledge, and stability. An evaluation of these conditions can help inform us on why hunger persists, and provide a starting point for action.

Is hunger really inevitable?

To eliminate hunger completely in the US, we need to ensure that every resident has each of these conditions fulfilled:

  • Access: This is our biggest hurdle. Inflation and high costs of living severely cut into food budgets. Even living in close proximity to grocery stores, too many people cannot afford to nourish themselves. In isolated or rural regions, the higher costs associated with accessing it make food even harder to maintain food security. People experiencing discrimination have further reduced access because of lower wages, poorer housing, or a lack of physical safety in their community.

High food costs force many people to work longer hours or multiple jobs, which further cuts into time and energy available for cooking. Inadequate and unaffordable housing necessitates survival with substandard kitchen and restricted cooking capabilities, which further impacts the ability to safely store and prepare food.

  • Knowledge: People living in poverty are regularly condemned for lacking budget-friendly cooking skills, as if knowing how to cook dry beans can somehow extricate them from poverty. Knowing how to cook is a powerful way for improving quality of life and adding fun to the process of nourishment, but the idea that a lack of cooking skills is a cause of hunger comes from the assumption that hunger is personal failure rather than systemic problem. Further, programs that uphold this idea often teach cooking a precise way, or use specific ingredients, which ignores cultural traditions and identity. By dictating that there is a “right” and “wrong” way to eat, it implies that those who don’t use these specific practices perpetuate their own poverty. A lack of knowledge is not a contributor to food insecurity in the US.

Improving food access is the primary solution for solving hunger in America.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is our primary tool for addressing food insecurity (although there are many others). SNAP provides families with an allotted amount of money every month that can be spent on food at participating retailers. The amount of money received assumes that household costs for food are much lower than they actually are. As a result, even those receiving food assistance still experience food insecurity.

At the onset of the pandemic, when millions of people lost their jobs or had their hours reduced, hunger loomed. In response, the government both expanded the amount of benefits as well as the flexibility of anti-hunger programs, and it worked.

Effective policy action has shown us that hunger is not inevitable. We have the resources, the knowledge, and the policy mechanisms to end hunger. We simply lack the political will.

As the Covid-era programs implemented to fight hunger expire, we see the need once again rising. Fears of welfare fraud and belief in individual responsibility have overridden our commitment to ending hunger as supports are reduced or eliminated.

Next Steps

We must change the way we think about hunger. The cultural assumptions we carry and the policy tools we use perpetuate the attitude that hunger is a personal failure rather than a systemic problem.

 To facilitate the evolution of our policy solutions, our discussion on this issue must evolve too. By adjusting how we frame and talk about hunger, we can significantly impact the anti-hunger environment around us to transform this nebulous issue into a tangible problem with a practical solution.

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

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It’s Time to Modernize Food Banking

When I worked as a coordinator at my very first food pantry over a decade ago, I prepared for distribution by heading down to my local food bank to “shop the dock.” I picked up our order, and also got to browse through their unrestricted options that were up for grabs. One of my favorite things to dig into was the bread- they usually had an abundance of beautiful, fresh loaves from one of my favorite local bakery chains. I always enthusiastically loaded up our cargo van.

At the end of my pantry distribution, we always had too many of these loaves left over. Clients didn’t want it. Our shoppers were looking for softer, sliced bread, to make their children’s lunches or for toast with breakfast. This bread was too heavy, went stale a little faster in its paper bag, and it was likely that many of our households lacked bread knives suitable for slicing.

Ten years later, recollecting some of the food choices I made for this pantry makes me cringe. I loaded up on the bread that excited me, rather than recognizing the bread that my clients wanted.

Unfortunately, this rookie mistake is common in the emergency food assistance world.

Food banking was primarily designed to focus on the giver- to create the most convenient system based on our assumptions of the needs of those experiencing hunger.

Until recent years, little attention was given to the other side of this transaction (by mainstream anti-hunger institutions. Alternative food systems have been doing this work for ages.) Finally, we’re starting to have discussions about how we can develop effective ways for people experiencing hunger to access the food they need in a way that works for them.

If we started over from scratch on designing a model to end hunger, few individuals would likely choose a system where participants are scrutinized and deemed worthy before someone else allows them access to a selection of the foods the giver decides are appropriate.

Although it’s absolutely time that we start finding and developing new ways to respond to hunger, we can also reassess how we do food banking. There is tremendous opportunity for progress and empowerment by adapting our thinking and operations.

How can we transform this charity-focused system into something that truly empowers our community to thrive?

We must work with the resources we’ve got, which means we must turn our existing emergency food assistance program into something that focuses on the people we serve, rather than facilitating our own efforts.

It’s popular to throw around the term, “client centered.” Here’s what that can mean in practice:

  • Offering informational and outreach literature in the language spoken by shoppers and having someone available to speak their language in person.
  • Scheduling hours that are convenient and accessible for clients, which are almost always not the most convenient or accessible for volunteers. (This may demonstrate a need to depend more heavily on paid employees than volunteers).
  • Offering culturally appropriate foods that shoppers want and are excited about- which are quite possibly not the same thing that pantry staff wants to eat.
  • Having people with lived experience of hunger in leadership roles, on staff, and among volunteers, and systems that ensure their perspectives are celebrated and integrated into practice.

No matter how well educated we are, or how long we’ve worked in the field, we all carry prejudices about hunger that impact how we provide services. The only way to overcome this barrier is by designing structures and systems under the leadership of individuals with lived experience so that we don’t implement models based on our assumptions.

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

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Do You Advocate Like Everyone Deserves to Eat?

When I say that “everyone deserves to eat,” no one argues with me. This statement is lauded as commendable, generous, and noncontroversial.

But when I start to discuss individual populations and how to make sure they have the food they need to thrive, I regularly encounter resistance. Even with mission statements about universally ending hunger, many individuals and organizations have confidential qualifiers about who is really included in their anti-hunger efforts.  

Who is regularly excluded from the idea that everyone deserves to eat?

The idea that children are helpless to fight hunger makes them a high priority for food assistance programs. Adults without children, less so. In 2019 the anti-hunger community had to aggressively rally to prevent SNAP rule changes increasing the burden on individuals without children to continue receiving food assistance. The assumption is that people able to work can make enough money to be self-sufficient if they just try hard enough, regardless of the mountains of data demonstrating otherwise.

For the same reason, seniors are a primary focus of anti-hunger efforts. Living on fixed retirement incomes, they are vulnerable to economic fluctuations and sudden changes in circumstance.

As a result, many anti-hunger organizations seeking noncontroversial community backing will emphasize through their mission statements, goals, and donor outreach that they support and nourish families, children, and seniors. But this comes at the expense of people who don’t fall within those demographics.

To maintain the impression that anti-hunger efforts only support individuals truly deserving of help, few food justice organizations are brave enough to advocate for people living in poverty just because they live in poverty. Even fewer are comfortable identifying the racial and systemic injustices that produce this condition.

Beyond the anti-hunger community’s preference for serving families, there are several other demographics who are consistently judged as undeserving of healthy food and food access.

The quality and health of food in prisons is a growing topic lately, with many people promoting the assumption that breaking the law exempts an individual from the right to healthy food and a healthy body.  

Further, people with criminal convictions may be restricted or banned from receiving food assistance long after they complete their sentence, again justified by the idea that breaking the rules exempts them from privileges.

Regardless of your opinion on whether these demographics really deserve to eat as much as anyone else, it demonstrates that the concept that ‘everyone deserves to eat’ is far more loaded than it appears.

If we’re committed to being true anti-hunger advocates, then we need to make sure there is alignment between our words and our actions. Here’s how to check:

  • Who does your organization serve? Are there specific groups or demographics targeted more than others? Is that specifically identified in your outreach efforts? Does your mission statement and/or vision reflect this?
  • How narrow or broad are your advocacy efforts? Do you only act on childhood hunger, but offer food access services to adults?
  • Do you use data to inform your policy actions? For example, does your organization prioritize demographics like families or children even when your region has uncomfortably high hunger rates among other, deemed “less deserving” demographics?
  • What relationships will you gain or lose if you’re honest about who your organization does or does not prioritize/serve?

Ensuring anti-hunger advocates and organizations have a clear alignment between their mission and actions ensures we’re building trustworthy leaders. It is hard to let go of preconceived ideas about what our community wants to support, what our leaders are comfortable fighting for, and the easiest ways to achieve our goals. Transparency in how we think about and act on our anti-hunger aspirations is the only way we will build a truly effective and motivated coalition that can actually end hunger.

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

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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.

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