You're in for a shock, then, because "really crap highly processed food" is indeed unfortunately what they mainly provide.
Yep! For a number of reasons:
- We have to cater for people who don't have a lot of money for heating or cooking
- We provide a stopgap, not a long term solution
- Most people we see are busy trying to find other things too: jobs, all the benefits they are entitled to, a safe place to live. Meals that are quick and easy are often much appreciated
- the food bags are usually not the only source of food people will have. They are simply enough nutritionally
Perhaps naively, I also thought until recently that they would provide basics like bread, potatoes, milk, butter, cheese, fruit and vegetables alongside cupboard staples such as pasta and rice and snacks. But I found out when trying to donate apples to my local one recently that fresh food is not even accepted!
OK - fresh fruit bruises too easily. We have to split up bags and share them out. They bruise, go soft, mouldy and are less nutritionally valuable than other foods - in the short term
Instead of fresh apples, they wanted beans, tinned pies, tinned soups and packets and wouldn't accept fruit or vegetables. I feel really sorry for the people who normally eat fresh food but have to have this processed rubbish out of necessity when they are already having a hard time.
That's because you are looking at it from a position of 'enough' not from a position of having bugger all and needing something simple and easy to make cheaply.
And many foodbanks do have fresh fruit and veg. It depends entireely on the local need and support for the foodbank.
And what about children who need the vitamins for their development?
What? You think that the dieticians we work for haven't thought of that? Or that other agemncies aren't involved with many of our clients?
This article reveals a lot about the state of food banks in this country: www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/lived-food-bank-parcel-week-2472784
That reporter missed/ musinderstood so much. Chatting / catching up over a cup of tea and biscuits? Also being engaged by various support workers avaialbel to signpost further support.
She also chose to eat ONLY what was in the food bags. ONLY!! Very few of our clients have absolutely no other food in the house. Those that do (maybe a woman who has fled to a refuge) would get more help, tailored to her specific situation - maybe more bags with fewer items over a week or two, more random items like condiments, etc. What she got, what she was told he had been given was a regular single person bag.
When I told my friends that I couldn't go out for tea, or mentioned to work colleagues that I was hungry, people felt sorry for me and offered me food, which I resisted.
I appreciated their concern, but I can imagine for people using a food bank that such comments could appear a bit patronising at times, and that pride could make people feel a little stung and not as worthy as others, just because they can't afford to eat.
Nope! Women at work who give most of their food to the kids when they gt back from school don't usually have that level of pride! They can't afford to eat. The reasons for this are many and varied. We spend a lot of time debunking the shame of this.. which that article just underlines, focusses on, ends on!
if homeless people were to use a food bank service, as many do, it made me think that they sadly may struggle to make many meals with packet and tinned food. Well, no shit Sherlock! And they'd get a completely different package and completely different support/signposting.
I luckily don't have any allergies or food intolerances and I'm not vegetarian, but using the food bank also made realise that it would have been even more difficult if I was unable to eat a particular kind of food, as the options I was given were already limited and I may have been restricted even more if this was the case, which may be a reality for others using the service.
And again! Who does she think run foodbanks? Total idiots? Tell us you have an allergy. Tell us you need vitamin supplementation etc (like many people with pernicious anemia these days).
More research was required. That article is shockingly uninformed and probably put a fair few people off donating or using the service!