To think if you rely on a food bank you may need to compromise your vegan principles?

[LondonUnited]

I’m a supporter of our local food bank and am on their mailing list. I received an email earlier to say that they were supporting a vegan family and were therefore asking for specific food donations, including Oatly oat milk, various nuts and seeds, specific types of beans, etc etc.

I may get flamed for this but I couldn’t help thinking that - allergies aside (and I have a milk allergic child so I do get it) - if you need a food bank to feed your family, you might need to compromise on diet slightly? For a start, Oatly Barista is lovely and all that, but Aldi or Asda oat milk is also ok and half the price. And that the odd bit of tinned fish may be easier to access from a food bank than Brazil nuts and chia seeds...

If you're vegan and relying on a food bank to get through tough times I don't think you should be asked to compromise your principals, life is obviously sh!te enough!

I volunteer in the warehouse of our local foodbank and keep the website updated with the most needed items. At the moment we’re asking for tinned vegetarian meals, chocolate and toiletries. We’re well stocked on the majority of the basics.

We will always try and accommodate dietary preferences as well as likes and dislikes - why wouldn’t you. Many of those now using the foodbanks are those traditionally associated with needing help but many are people working but in minimum wage or zero hours jobs with delays or problems in receiving their benefits to bring them up to a minimum standard. No one wants to use a foodbank but unfortunately due to Covid and soon Brexit they are going to be needed more than ever.

If everyone who could gave one item a week from the list at their local foodbank the ability to help those who need it would improve significantly.

@latticechaos

If you're able to support the food bank just be generous. If you can't be generous, leave someone else to do it.

I don't like all this 'you'll get what you're given' stuff.

This is a perfect response

There's an old phrase
"Beggars can't be choosers"
Their response should be thank you for feeding us, not do you have a particular brand

@JustDoingMe but surely you need lots of people to donate to ensure you have enough for anyone in need. Does it really matter is some people can’t buy brand products.

Yes yabu to expect that a vegan should eat no vegan food. No yanbu to think asking for particular expensive brands is unreasonable. I'm sure most people don't take into consideration how much is spent from one person to the next. However if there are peopleasking for and expecting high end brands and that means there are less funds for others, that's just plain wrong.

Having read some of the comments on this thread, I hope none of you loose your jobs during Covid and Brexit, can’t meet your rent or mortgage payment and need to turn to the foodbank for help. Your attitude doesn’t make you any better a person than those turning up for help at the foodbank.

@Pomegranatepompom I donate what I can.... end of. I cannot give and then get my knickers in a twist about what people using the service request. Today it is them tomorrow it may be me. I am funny about some of the foods/brands I eat, not all posh brands either (I love Sainsbury's own brand bake beans, Morrison's own brand Special K but will only eat Branston pickle - not all together!! to name a few).Just because you use a food bank does not mean you cannot have a preference.
I hate the inferences to the 'deserving poor'

Congrats on making it to the dailyheil you nest of fucking vipers. It's a proper sign you're in the wrong when that happens and the comments there agree with you.

Sorry haven’t RTFT but it does strike me that perhaps a well meaning food bank organiser has asked the vegan family ‘what kind of things would you usually eat?’ Not really knowing much about a vegan diet, and has maybe quoted this directly? Rather than these being things that were necessarily ‘requested’?

Also Oatly Barista is really good in terms of fat content if you have a toddler who doesn’t/can’t have dairy milk which may be why Oatly has been requested?

I have been involved with a food bank for a long time. This is how we would approach this question (other food banks may vary etc):

Yes, food bank customers can express requests, eg halal, soft food (if toothless), no sugar (if diabetic), vegan, pet food etc.

If we happen to have a specialist item in stock, that someone has donated, then we will bend over backwards to match the item to the special request.

If someone is halal/vegetarian/kosher, which a lot of people are, we usually handle that by making up lots of generic vegetarian packages which would work for any of those customers - in other words the packages will exclude fish, meat and gelatin etc but probably won’t have specialist things like matzoh balls or tofu for example. They would be long on tinned chickpeas, fresh vegetables and tinned tomatoes, things like that.

It is highly unlikely that we would go out and buy special food for an individual requester, eg Oatly milk for a vegan. It is too time consuming and expensive. If we had the same request from a lot of people however, we might try to source a job lot via donation.

To give two examples:

During lockdown one shielding man asked for a Colin the Caterpillar cake for his birthday and it so happened that M&S had just donated a few Colin cakes that were about to go out of date. We matched the cake to the man and he was delighted, hooray.

In the run up to Eid we managed to source a large donation of dates from a local mosque, and these were distributed in packages for customers we knew to be Muslim.

Out of interest do food banks cater for people with Coeliac disease?

Yes! We have little problem catering for many different dietary needs and coeliac is one of the easier ones.

Like restaurants we have an allergies list to make it easy to select items and a coeliac bag, and any other different selection, gets picked into a different colour bag for collection.

Almost like we've been doing this for a couple of decades, or longer!

@YewHedge

Out of interest do food banks cater for people with Coeliac disease?

Most staple foods are naturally gluten free - rice, meat, veg, fruit, dairy. It's the processed stuff that isn't. My DD is a coeliac and the only "special" food I buy is bread, cereal, oats, pasta and flour. Occasionally ready made biscuits and treats instead of home made. She could eat from a food bank without needing many of these things. GF flour and pasta are not particularly expensive.

At least we've all learnt from this thread that "potters..." Is an asshat.

Helped out at a Christmas time collection at a supermarket. Discovered they don't have sugar listed on their want lists despite it being something people ask for at food Bank.
Because sugar is bad for you.
Also surprised me they don't point our own brand supermarket offerings are better value than branded items.

It did make me realise there are some very lovely people out there who are very generous with their cash.

Shreddies are vegan.

I want keen on oatly, tasted a bit like watery porridge.
Nuts and seeds are pretty essential for vegans, essential fatty acids and omegas a bag of flax seeds is £1

Veganism is a philosophy and is protected in the same way as religious dietary requirements. So no, they shouldn't have to eat something that goes violently against their beliefs or starve, OP.

Vegans don't just eat expensive food. All vegetables, most bread, pasta. All vegan.

@Angrywife

There's an old phrase "Beggars can't be choosers" Their response should be thank you for feeding us, not do you have a particular brand

It is an old phrase and a fucking horrible one too.

I happily buy good quality branded food for food banks and I'll now be adding Oatly milk to the list thanks to this enlightening thread.

to all of you who are smugly sitting there thinking people who use food banks should be bowing and scraping in their gratitude. (It's a Tesco value one btw 🖕).

happily buy good quality branded food for food banks and I'll now be adding Oatly milk to the list thanks to this enlightening thread

You are free to satisfy your own whims, but you’d do well to consider this advice from a PP:

They stressed that it was far better to buy basic brands and get more of it. They would much rather receive three tins of Tesco brand beans than one Heinz. There is a lot of good intent from donors saying that they want to donate what they themselves would like to eat but, and I mean this kindly, I don’t think many of those donors have been on the breadline the way people using food banks are

Mostly vegan food is really cheap though isn't it? Various types of beans , lentils , rice, pasta etc so having a few different suggestions to add variety isn't a bad idea . For example most people if they are getting food bank items with their shop will pick up a couple of treat items as well as the baked beans and noodles so it can be helpful to have some ideas for vegans . I agree that supermarket own milk substitutes are cheaper and probably similar '

I haven't read all pp because it is late at night and I'm on my last night of my holiday & can't be arsed.... However, I do run a food bank, we are not regulated by the council, we are not currently funded, we operated constantly throughout the lockdown, even when council run & other food banks closed doors. We always ask for food allergies and any other food preferences. If we are told the client is vegan we do our best to accommodate but do contact them to say that we may not be able to provide much. We do not 'buy' our food supplies, it is donated. We have NO money to cater for particular dietary requirements, we just do the best we can with what we have. If somebody wants to berate us for what we do, crack on, but look yourself in the mirror first and ask if you could be doing more for the less fortunate.

@TitsOutForHarambe

I know the thread seems more focused on whether or not this family are cheeky fuckers, but just wanted to add that if people are thinking of things to donate to food banks then dried beans and pulses are fantastic. Everyone can eat them, they're packed full of nutrients, they're dirt cheap and they're very filling.

I fell on hard times a while ago, and sadly there were no food banks around but I found that big bags of rice and dried beans from the Idian supermarket were a God send. The first time I Went in I spent less than a tenner and I was still eating that food over a month later.

I agree that dried beans are cheaper but mostly they need a lot of cooking and if people are visiting a food bank chances are they may also struggle to pay fuel bills or may even be in temporary accommodation with poor cooking facilities so something which can be heated in minutes is normally better .

I agree that dried beans are cheaper but mostly they need a lot of cooking

A lot of them can be soaked in water for 12 hours or so and then they cook really quickly