Do you work at a pantry? Do you shop at a pantry? Do you donate to a pantry? – Part 2
“Can I offer you some of this delicious celery? I noticed you just walked past it.”
“THANKS, BUT I CAN’T CHEW IT. I WISH I COULD.
A big challenge in the food pantry system is getting the food to the people that they can eat. Many things come into play here:
Dietary preferences
Health conditions
Religious guidelines
One challenge hardly ever mentioned is whether or not a person has teeth.
Once the teeth are gone, many foods are just not edible for a person. Take for example a simple food like bread. Our pantry has always been proud to serve Bread Alone Bread. Unfortunately, toothless people have trouble eating it. It’s not soft enough.
There are many fruits and vegetables which a toothless person cannot eat:
celery
radishes
apples
Pantries offering client choice make life easier for both the pantry and the shopper because people take what they can use.
Another consideration in choosing food for pantry shelves is the homeless person. The homeless person’s kitchen is in his/her shirt pocket so the selection is limited to
peanut butter
protein bars
cheese
carrot sticks.
Foods for the homeless include items
which can be eaten raw,
which don’t need either refrigeration or cooking,
which can be easily carried from place to place.
Once a person becomes homeless, s/he more or less automatically becomes hungry. For many homeless, eating is a challenge repeated at every meal. Some food pantries knowingly or unknowingly are not homeless friendly because
of the bureaucracy of the paperwork (How does one prove which bridge s/he lives under?),
of the lack of foods on the shelves acceptable to the homeless,
and because pantry coordinators, church boards, feel that food pantries are inappropriate for homeless people.
Whenever I ponder the obstacles to offering proper food to pantry shoppers, I find myself asking questions:
Why can’t:
food stamps be more generous?
wages be higher?
gas be cheaper?
rent be realistic?
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
