Foodbank

[Parker231]

Posting in AIBU for traffic

As a foodbank volunteer could I please can anyone who can to donate to their local foodbank this weekend. Demand is huge at the moment and with more redundancies happening each week more and more people will be turning to a foodbank for help. It could be you needing their help in the future. The link below let’s you search for your local foodbank and see what they need the most.

Thank you

www.trusselltrust.org/get-help/find-a-foodbank/

And I have been skint. I completely ran out of money when I was 20 and my sister had to give me money for food.

I didn't go and buy puddings and biscuits! Because I wasnt getting given a bag of free food, I had to think about how I could make that £15 do as many meals as possible.i bought pasta and tinned tomatoes and flour and spam and onions and carrots and potatoes and swede, and porridge & uht milk and bread and apples. stuff that is cheap, keeps, is nutritious and filling.

I enjoyed those meals too. I love porridge with apple in.

Ireallywantsomechips none of our local foodbanks are Trussel Trust, so looking on their page wouldn't help. They have Facebook pages though so you might find a local one that way.

I won’t donate to the trussell trust because where I am they have partnered with an evangelical Christian organisation to run the food banks.

It’s a condition of being involved with the food banks concerned that you pray with them and lead worship and those who come to get food are preached at and “encouraged” to attend.

It’s all very worthy poor and undeserving poor and Victorian attitudes.

Sorry op. I do donate to other organisations but not them.

I'd love to know what nutritionist recommends biscuits.

My daughter is under a dietician for weight gain issues (IUGR baby, its a common problem) & even with her being on the 2nd% for weight they do not recommend eating loads of sugar. Fats yes, sugar nope.

@Frdd - hello - I don’t think it matters at all where you donate to. The main thing is that people are donating.

The Trussell FB I volunteer at definitely isn’t religious. I’m anti any religion.

And yes I absolutely do think FBs should only give out healthy food. With the exception of christmas/eid/diwali when I happily donate sweet treats as I think most people eat treats on celebration days.

In the same way that schools and nurseries generally only provide healthy food.

Where it's available, I'm happy to contribute some of the healthier "puddings" made for children, in the same way school dinners often include "cakes" made with no sugar & sweetened with fruit, as I appreciate these are a cheap and filling way to provide children with nutritious dairy and carbs, which children need.

And actually, if you provide fruit that can be used to make a healthy sweet dessert.

My view is: if they don't have so much food spare that they dont need healthy donations, they obviously are pretty well stocked. If actually it's that they don't consider a food parcel complete without a sponge pudding and would rather feed fewer people but include that, I think they want their heads seeing to.

Frdd a lot of foodbanks are run by churches, but I don't recognise your description. The volunteers at the foodbanks I know of would never force their faith on anyone.

I have no read the entire thread. But I wanted to say. If u can add some Free From stuff in there as well. I eat free from so always add that to my one at Tesco. If I had to have a food parcel I would be stuffed without it

Why should FB’s only give out healthy food? We all try and eat a healthy diet but there’s nothing wrong with an occasional sponge pudding, box of coco pops or packet of chocolate biscuits.

It’s similar to having a McDonald’s. No one should have them in their diet all the time but the occasional one doesn’t do any harm.

Paranoid that's a really good point, very important to include food suitable for people with dietary restrictions. I'll add some GF next time!

Because this is a 3 day emergency food parcel.

Do you eat Macdonald's or cakes etc every 3 days?!

And because money is not finite. I would rather spend the money that could be spent on biscuits & sponge pudding, on healthier food to feed more people.

If there are truly so many people desperately in need of food, we need to be prioritising resources to feeding as many of them as possible, rather than ensuring some get treats as well.

No but in an emergency I would want people to have a treat - a biscuit with their coffee or jam on their toast.
We are aiming for every child of a family attending the FB at Christmas to get an advent calendar and a selection box and each family to get a box of biscuits. A local company has already promised the biscuits.

My favourite charity to support. I was in need of something like this many years ago, and was fortunate to be helped by some good friends. It's important to me to pay it forward, so to speak, so I donate regularly.
None of us ever know if or when we'll fall on hard times. It can come out of nowhere.
Thank you OP

Well i always donate atChristmas and i donate sugary treats....why? Because they are delicious and i eat them myself. Everyone deserves a treat.
You are not exactly going to be obese if you have a cake now and again( and not much else dure to poverty). However, i agree that nutritios food is also very tasty and welcome.

Again, can I please stress to check what your local FB actually wants we get loads of GF products, given very generously, but in my 12 years at the FB we have never been asked for GF products - so then we have the problem of where to pass it on to. The same with tampax etc ... when 'Period Poverty' hit the news we were inundated with tampax.

Different FBs will have different requirements - I visited a friend 100 miles away - her local FB genuinely needed pulses so I was able to deliver a load of excess pulses from our FB.

Let's face it, having a bag of porridge oats and some chick peas is pretty useless when you have no cooking facilities. I know in your head people are creating wholesome meals with basics but when you are shipping your child back and forward to a school on the opposite side of the city as you've been dumped in 'temporary' accommodation miles from your home so spend much of the day on public transport and get home late, cold and hungry and have nothing but a kettle or maybe a microwave if you're lucky, are battling depression, stress, addiction or other struggles that see you turning to a food bank having some do gooder looking down their nose thinking they know best and deciding you should be at the stove making hearty stews for your family is not particularly helpful.

Imo if you are going to get in the spirit of giving, give what the foodbank wants, nit what you deem worthy. Otherwise you sound like a reluctant giver coming from a very priveledged position.

Not*

Thanks for the reminder, OP.

I have a monthly standing order to my local food bank but because I'm not really shopping in the supermarkets anymore, I've stopped making as many donations of food as I used to.

I'm in town today so I'll do a shop for the collection point in my local Tesco.

@pinkstripeycat

During lockdown I telephoned my local food bank and left A few voicemails asking when I could drop food off. Was planning on getting them a load of what they’d asked for on a leaflet someone gave me. Never heard a thing from them again

Our local one was overwhelmed but was manning their FB page. Suggest you try there.

I do think the Christian run foodbanks are a bit different to Operation Christmas Child - nobody has to accept a Bible leaflet with their food parcel, for a start!

It’s a condition of being involved with the food banks concerned that you pray with them and lead worship and those who come to get food are preached at and “encouraged” to attend.

The food banks I know in actual churches don't preach at anyone or even mention religion to anyone.

Midnight star I totally understand that, and absolutely consider food that can be eaten with little/no proper cooking facilities. It's not all about "wholesome meals with basics". But these are poor families who deserve good nutrition. A child who has peanut butter on toast is going to stay for fuller for longer and have better concentration at school than a child who is a sugar roller coaster from jam every morning.

@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland your earlier post would seem legit were it not for this line Because I wasnt getting given a bag of free food
The tone of that line is just dripping with contempt. Perhaps you should donate to a food bank dedicated just to the 'worthy poor' while the rest of us try to help out those who are suffering from food poverty in conjunction with a number of other issues, meaning that a bag of oats and a tin of kidney beans may not always be appropriate.