Healthy food for the food bank

[Pimpleminds]

DD's school want donations for the food bank for their harvest festival. I asked my friend who works there what they were short of and she said hot chocolate. Spurred on by this I picked up some instant hot choc and a box of coco pops but DD was horrified: 'no mum Mrs X (head) said it must be healthy food for people that don't have the money to buy things that are good for them'.
AIBU to think that if you are using a food bank you might want the odd treat as well?

I haven't read all replies, but just to say when I donate to food back I always include tea bags, uht milk and chocolate digestives. The thought of someone not being able to afford a cup of tea and a biscuit makes me feel really sad, no it is not essential to their diet and yes they would be better having a beef stew and a glass of orange juice but for me there is something so comforting about a cup of tea, or inviting someone over for a cup of tea and being able to offer a biscuit, to me it is fundamentally human and I think all people deserve that.

(Yes I know not everyone likes tea!)

vezzie I once convinced the chaplain at my kids prep school that we should donate the harvest festival haul to a hostel for young people leaving custody, care and those that are homeless.

He specified dried and tinned foods but didn't say much more.

You should have seen the stuff! Quinoa, sun dried tomatoes, borlotti beans by the truck load .

The generosity was overwhelming but ya know...

The next year we handed out lists with explanations!

Dried beans are decidedly unhealthy for you if they're not cooked properly.

Food banks are supposed to be a short-term stopgap (to make up for delays in the benefits system) - if they're being used this way then it really doesn't matter whether the food constitutes a balanced diet or not.

well, yes, I donate a lot of tesco value food to the food bank. I'm certainly not going to donate things I can't afford to feed my own family. We live on value foods (with fresh, obviously), and donate. If we didn't, I wouldn't be able to donate.

I'd rather share than buy luxury.

I'm horrified that in this country we have people starving.

I'm horrified too that you can't donate formula. By the time a baby is formula fed, it's formula fed, the end. And it is far beyond the remit of a charitable institution to encourage or discourage any method of feeding a baby. That does kind of appall me actually. No one is going to look down at their minutes-old baby and say "no I'm not breastfeeding, I can get 3 days' worth of formula from the food bank, you know"

I give what we are asked to, which are tinned puddings, long life fruit juice, tinned vegetables NOT POTATOES, and UHT milk. This week dd2 is going to ceremonially donate her last pack of night-time pull ups, she is very proud :)

I think my list might have caused some of this.
But I literally just cut and pasted it from their website.
Chocolate was top because it's in alphabetical order.
And the section for the list I posted is titled, URGENTLY NEEDED.

For more info the next list is LOW ON STOCK and is:-
Assorted fish (other than tuna)
Coffee
Custard (1 litre cartons)
Custard (400 gms tins)
Fruit juice (Apple, orange, pineapple etc.) 1 litr
Mouthwash
Sugar (500g)
Tinned Meat
Tinned meat pies & puddings
Tinned Pasta
Tinned Potatoes (540gms)
Tinned Tomatoes

And... the WELL STOCKED list looks like this:-

Baby food
Baked beans (200 gms)
Baked Beans (400 gms)
Biscuits
Cat food
Cereal
Dog food
Dried pasta
Energy bars
Formula baby milk
Jam, marmalade, honey (340 gms)
Nappies (newborn)
Nappies (size 2)
Nappies (size 3)
Nappies (size 4)
Nappies (size 5)
Nappies (size 6)
Rice (1kilo bags)
Sanitary towels
Sugar (1kg)
Tea (240 bags)
Tea (80 bags)
Tinned Soup
Tuna
UHT Milk

This is just my local foodbank.
Just copying and pasting here - honest!

I help run a foodbank. Treats are very welcome. When life is hard it's nice to have a little treat. Generally food banks are overflowing with baked beans, pasta and tinned soup, but short on treat items. Foodbanks almost always have a strict policy of what they include in each food parcel, eg. one thing rice or pasta, one pasta sauce, 2 tins veg etc etc and a sweet treat is always in there too. The people we tend to see are not over-consuming calories, they are cutting back.

I wonder what the Head meant by 'healthy'. We usually think of healthy food as fresh, and as food banks need to keep stocks in you are less likely to get fresh food.
I collect for food bank at Church and we rarely get 'value' food, although we do get some own brands.

"healthy" is such a meaningless word for food. I hate hate hate the word healthy used to mean, for instance "low fat". low fat foods are good for people to need to eat less fat, bad for people who need to eat more fat. You can't call a food healthy or not unless you know every single thing about the person who is going to eat it, which you never do.

Yes re the chocolate and and other luxury items. When you are struggling enough to need to use a foodbank you've usually been eating too few calories for a while. I know ATM that as a lone parent on benefits I under eat to save money and ensure my DC have plenty. A bar of chocolate is high in fat and calories. I am regularly to be found mid morning eating half a bar of basics chocolate because it is the calorie equivalent of a few slices of toast and I need to save the bread for my DCs. I never have breakfast anymore, I like to save all the porridge oats and bread for my children. I will have a banana later on if we have a lot that are about to turn overripe, but more often that not I will have a couple of biscuits of a few squares of chocolate because weirdly it works out cheaper than buying another loaf of bread or another bag of oats, milk to make it up with etc. I am certainly not going to be obese anytime soon. I'm heading the other way tbh, as the most I eat a day is 1500 calories as we rarely eat meat, and to make things last I have small portions. I'm not going to drop dead of malnutrition mind, but I eat as little as I can in order to ensure my children have plenty and so actually for me, a bar or value chocolate or a pack of biscuits goes a long way to boosting my daily calorie intake and getting some much needed fat and sugar into me!

but thinking opening a box and seeing a block of Tesco value chocolate will make someone's day is just patronising and silly.

It's really not! At our food bank, they choose the food they want from a range we keep. Each fmaily is allowed a certain number of items, depending on the size of said fmaily.

We have the odd block of choc now & then. We don't buy it, but occasionally it is donated.

One mum we had in recently hadn't eaten much more than toast & marg for a few days, so her kids got what she had in the cupboard. She choose carefully & made sure their needs were taken care of. So, no room in her allowance for chocolate.

I gave her a bar as she was leaving (as a gesture of goodwill) and initially she refused, saying she had all her items. I insisted she took it for her, for after the kids were in bed.

She cried. She said it has been MONTHS since she had chocolate, as she just couldn't afford it, or justify it for herself.

So yeah, it certainly DID make her day!

It's like 'you're starving so you'll eat anything. We barely stock anything value, to be honest! We respect that just because people need our help, it doesn't mean they want to eat crap. We usually go for brands & a lot of the donated stuff is branded too.

Wrt to fuel for cooking...we have a fair few people who are homeless, so do not have any way to open a tin of food, let alone cook it. We do have the option of a voucher for a supermarket in those instances, but it shouldn't' be assumed that EVERYONE has free & easy access to cooking facilities.

differentname that's so sad. I'm glad you gave it to her I bet she ejoyed it too.

At Christmas last year I put in lots of tinned food and half a dozen tin openers - I wasn't sure if they'd be used but what you've said suggests that they may have been taken. I coulddn't imagine anything more dispiriting than being given tins of food with no way to open them.

You have had lots of great replies just want to add you can say to your dd that it is very sad that people have no food but its nice to have a little treat and that you are sure the children would love the hot chocolate and cereal. Then id contact the school and tell them the same

Look in your Tesco trolley for the food bank, it's just about all Tesco value! Which sucks a bit. It's like 'you're starving so you'll eat anything.' Which is sort of true, but some stuff at least tastes like proper food but the chocolate - boak!

Actually what I give is what I buy for myself, yes it is all basics stuff, but I know I am one step better off if I can buy myself a tin of something and buy one for someone else too. I wouldn't put chocolate in instead, but I might put some in on top of the other stuff.

Totally trivial but I like the tesco value chocolate the dark one.

I tend to donate Heinz Chicken Big Soups (suggested by a foodbank volunteer). They take minutes to heat up and contain meat, veg and potato.

We cleared out our cupboards recently n had loads jars brought on offer tried one n not keen n just sat there and we bagged it all up n donated in the food bank bin in asda think I even had load baby food jars as my ds never liked them.

I always think you never know when you may need to use a food bank and we are all tightening our belts but adding a tin of value beans or sweet corn or some corned beef to your shop for the food bank really does help.

Our local church for harvest has asked for sugar, flour n oil as that's what the food bank they support is short of.

Never considered toiletries esp sanitary wear so will def pop some towels n tampons in the box next time can't imagine not being able to afford those.

Au our school lots of children refused to donate as they said 'dole scum get loads as it is'

This is a genuine question.

How do food banks deal with dietary intolerances (milk, gluten etc.)? I don't mean people being faddy, I mean for people who certain foods make genuinely ill.

I usually put in kettle stuff like instant noodles, instant porridge and cuppa soups as well as tinned foods. I tend to avoid things like the fray bentos pies because they need an oven to heat them up whereas a tin of stew could be microwaved.

I will put more non food items in from now on.

I tend to donate value stuff because I figure twice as many meals from the same amount of outlay is better. So if a tin of tesco corned beef costs 1.50 and a tin of branded corned beef costs 2.75 I'll buy two of the tescos.
I ask the lady at the bank to text me once a month with what they are really short of. It's always tinned meat/pies plus variable bits (very often squash for example). I stopped giving tuna when it got so expensive that I changed my family onto sardines, but apparently no-one at the foodbank likes sardines so she asked me to stop bringing them :-D.
I don't give the same food we eat to the foodbank because we tend to eat dried slow cook or perishables, but we did try out the value stuff camping this year to check it out: made corned beef hash and had tinned value stewed steak with tinned spuds and carrots one day. It was OK and the kids really liked it!! I'm interested that several people have said how special Heinz soup is: I've always found it really sweet and unpleasant but I may rethink that one. I always put jelly in as a kids treat: I figure it makes a family size dessert, needs no milk and only a kettle.

Foodbanks can usually deal with special dietary requirements if they are told about them in advance - so referring agency phones ahead to let the centre know. We can usually make up suitable boxes - they might be a bit different to the normal ones but full of food nonetheless e.g. we usually have some soy milk etc. for dairy intolerance/vegans, sub rice and potatoes for pasta things like that.

YY to treats, I have had folk in tears over getting some hot chocolate and a packet of biscuits to give to their kids. Also sanpro, toothpaste, soap, loo roll and the like. Not being able to keep clean really crushes morale.

Value stuff is absolutely fine, we'd rather have 2ce as much food to give out than worry about brand snobbery.

blackberry, I appreciate that you've used a food bank and that you had things you found useful and things you found not so useful, but I think if someone who works for one says they are in urgent need of something they know what they're talking about.

And why are you harping on 'value chocolate'? a) some people (not just people using food banks) might like it and b) not all chocolate given to food banks is value, is it?

But on the original point, the HT sounds patronising.

Does anyone know if you can donate things like paracetamol, ibuprofen?

Also I wondered about sticking in a basic all round multivitamin. Anyone know if foodbanks can accept those? Just thinking there are bound to be nutritional gaps if you are having to resort to a food bank so it might help.