Thank you for this. Yes.
I think we should examine a bit more carefully why people would be referred to a food bank, so how they could ever be in a situation where they cannot afford to buy food each day to feed their child/ren and themselves. We need to start with that before deciding whether their dietary requirements should be respected and whether they should be grateful for out of date food and snaffle it up.
There is incredulity as to how someone could ever be in a situation where they can't walk into a supermarket and join the flow, like everyone else, of picking up what they need and not much thinking about the cost, if at all. Yes, a solid proportion of those referred to the food bank do have substance abuse issues (and let's remember that these very often stem from situations of emotional abuse/disruption, particularly in childhood). But there is also a significant tranche of people who might seem just like the ones you'd see next to you in a 'normal' queue at Sainsbury's. Some of these may be being referred to the food bank by a domestic abuse support organisation. They may have had to get away from a domestic situation which was dangerous/intolerable, and had been going on for years, and had eventually completely decimated their security base, income, and health. Those people might be there for a helping hand to get them through while they do their very best to rebuild their lives and stand on their own two feet again. They may have a child/children who also depend entirely on that parent for survival, the abusive parent's final act of control being to have abnegated all responsibility and to ignore pleas even for a contribution to feed their child.
So it is not all useless drug addicts who can't get a life, or nousy dodgers surfing through life on benefits. (to be clear: I am referring to commonly-used labels here)
Maybe consider this instead: if someone gets referred to a food bank, it is because someone in a support organisation, who talks to/meets many people in difficult situations, has, with their experience, judged that this person is in a desperate situation and does not have enough income to pay for accommodation, services and food. Very most likely this means that the person's income has been severely affected by something. Which means their ability to earn has been affected. Which means something pretty catastrophic has happened in their lives.
Imagine you are walking down the street and it's sunny and you are feeling good and then a lycra cyclist smashes into you and suddenly you are in the gutter and dirt and dazed and hurt and trying to get out of the way of an oncoming bus. In that situation, you might have a moment of sheer panic. But then you feel someone helping you get out of that gutter, and talking kindly to you, and dusting you down, and checking if you are ok or need to go to A and E.
The food bank isn't just about food. It isn't about Harrods Christmas puddings and tinned potatoes and unwanted toys and Harding & Bayliss hand cream sets. It is about kindness. For the person who's been referred, they walk into a room of people gathered there for one purpose only: to show them kindness.
That's the bottom line that I felt I needed to add into the conversation.
So when that person beleaguered by life, for whatever reason, and most probably because they've encountered someone else who's really attacked them at some point in their lives, to bring them down to this, walks into the food bank, then ... do we give them out of date chicken? Or tell them that their lactose intolerance doesn't matter here, because now they are on charity so should be grateful for whatever they get? Or do we roll our eyes and say 'how is it possible they can't afford food?' ? How it's possible is super simple. You get some money. You pay for a home for your kid. And then you don't have any money left. Not even £1. So then what do you do? And don't say 'you go out and get a job' because if you are running so on empty that you can't even buy food, then the panic is extreme and you don't even have the focus for anything else because your mind is only filled with one thing: how to feed your child. And nobody would be employing someone who is on the edge like that and hasn't got the basics covered.
So the food bank steps in. Stabilises the basic situation. Gives some foundation. Then the person is able to take their focus off foraging and start to get back into a normal mindset and work up their own income. Then one day they don't need the food bank anymore. They become like the 'rest' of us, putting things in the food bank box at the end of the shop.