A couple of food bank questions

[Champagneforeveryone]

Treading carefully having had my arse handed to me on a previous food bank thread, but here goes....

DH has bought home a reverse advent calendar from church. All well and good, we donate a package at Christmas anyway and I assumed this would be things that were specifically needed.

Now I'm aware these are suggestions and I can deviate away from it, but the list includes such random items as salad cream, fish paste, tinned tomatoes and tinned vegetables. I know literally nobody who eats tinned veg or fish paste, tinned tomatoes are a decent staple but need a lot of extra gubbins to cook with, and there's surely a limit to the amount of salad cream one food bank can stockpile. I have visions of the volunteers desperately slipping bottles of salad cream into the bags of every visitor every single time they attend.

So is this representative of what food banks actually give out, or a list compiled by a well meaning but clueless church person? There was no mention of toiletries (including sanitary protection) packet noodles, pasta sauce etc which just seemed odd.

Secondly, while I blatantly ignored the missive to buy fish paste was shopping, I started to wonder which is the best option. For example one of the items was biscuits.
There is a huge range of biscuits and I couldn't really decide whether I should buy 6 packs of the economy ones, or two packs of nicer ones. I didn't consider one pack of the premium range as I don't usually buy them myself.

On the one hand, I feel bad buying cheaper quality than I buy myself, almost as if I'm suggesting you don't deserve nice things if you use a food bank. OTOH, 6 families could have had a packet of biscuits rather than the 2 who will benefit from my choice. I just think that if I was so desperate that I was relying on a food bank, then a nice packet of biscuits is possibly the only treat I might get. If you donate, what do you do?

Once you start considering these things, the whole thing becomes a minefield 😆

At least we haven't had that one thighmistress, we're reasonably comfortable and a lot of our own groceries are own brand - Waitrose, but still own brand. I'd be really cross to be dictated to like that.

I've found it so helpful to hear others opinions and experiences, even though I'm furious that food banks are even needed. For example, I hadn't even considered that a lot of food bank users may be staying in hostels and the extra challenges that would present, so thank you all.

So far we have a tidy little collection, but my local small Waitrose didn't seem to have the holy grail fish paste (or I didn't know where to look for it!) so I will be striking out for The Big Sainsbury's later in the week 😉

Not necessarily.

One thing social workers do is check for food, eg when they are removing a child from the home the report could include what is in the cupboards. A load of Waitrose own brands can give a false impression.

It can also give a false impression to the neighbour who lent you the £5 you can't pay back yet.

Also if you are using a food bank you cannot afford for your child to reject the beans even if they are Waitrose, the ones you get from a corner shop are branded.

I'm generally not fussy about brands / non brands but there are one or two things I do only like one, I have never had a tomato soup that matched up to Heinz - and yes I know a home made tomato soup is better for me.