What to give vegan at foodbank?

Lleucu

Our food bank gives vouchers for the organic veg shop in town plus fresh food - all very much appreciated by the customers. We are small enough to give a balanced diet and cash.

Caterina

Lleucu that's so good, I wish we could do that, but the size of our food bank means that the cost would be prohibitive. It is a large foodbank in inner London, it would just not work. What I do want to do, though, next year, is bring a few low-perishability veg, such as onions, carrots, swede etc and maybe oranges and apples, just to have in a bowl for our clients to pick as they need. I would have to go through the coordinator's approval but I think she would be OK.

duchy

VfM4meplse wrote: »

I'm not trivialising anything. Meat is murder and I want no part of it: this is for me a fixed belief and not an "ideal". But then I wouldn't be knocking on the door of a food bank, either.

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Entirely your prerogative although the reality is the human instinct for genuine survival will take prescedence over almost everything. The fact you think you'd never need a food bank just illustrates you have no idea what genuine poverty actually is or the imagination to appreciate what that means.

Larumbelle

Caterina wrote: »

What I do want to do, though, next year, is bring a few low-perishability veg, such as onions, carrots, swede etc and maybe oranges and apples, just to have in a bowl for our clients to pick as they need. I would have to go through the coordinator's approval but I think she would be OK.

I have started to help out on a friend's allotment, and to share the produce. Even with both of us storing, freezing and preparing as much as we want, we still had surplus. I was really disappointed when my food bank said they were unable to accept produce of any kind.I think it is a great idea if you can get approval!

LameWolf

With the Powers That Be constantly banging on about everyone eating their five-a-day, it's a shame there's not more provision for sharing out surplus allotment produce. I don't know what the answer is; as Caterina says, for a large food bank, it would be a nightmare to try to organise, but there must surely be some way to do it.

moneyistooshorttomention

Larumbelle wrote: »

I have started to help out on a friend's allotment, and to share the produce. Even with both of us storing, freezing and preparing as much as we want, we still had surplus. I was really disappointed when my food bank said they were unable to accept produce of any kind.I think it is a great idea if you can get approval!

Is there some sort of community centre or something that might have room to take, say, ready-made up bags of fruit & veg. that they could give out to someone in need?

A noticeable number of Councils have local offices that have big enough foyers for instance to have a pile of such food bags there. Failing that - any local theatre/cinema/etc that liked to make a point of being "community" oriented - ie rather than a very commercial/part of a chain type place?

Universities/colleges ?

A possible angle with Council office type places could be = "Well - you're part of the State. Another part of the State has to pick up the slack if people aren't having a healthy enough diet - ie the NHS. Wouldn't you like people to have a healthy enough diet that it would reduce their chances of illness?".

Larumbelle

Thanks LW and MITSTM, I do not have any problems finding homes for any excess produce, we give it to friends and neighbours and other plot holders. It would just be nice to give it to those in real need. But food banks, langars etc seem to have real logistical and insurance problems accepting home grown produce, it's such a shame.

moneyistooshorttomention

I don't really understand why they would have insurance problems accepting fresh food. Some do - including my local one.

Though it's true that I'm now living in a part of the country where sometimes I notice that things aren't done in the standard "official" way in a variety of respects. So - I guess there's no reason why the foodbank would be any different about that then....:rotfl:.

I'm guessing that, if there really are insurance problems, and the local foodbank wants to do things "officially" - then I would imagine one possible way to get round that would be to say to the insurance companies that the fresh food isn't being given away free. Then charge a token 1p for a bag of fresh produce. The foodbank would then, perfectly accurately, be able to say they weren't giving it away for free and the recipients were buying their goods;). Where there's a will there's a way...

Prinzessilein

For some years I worked in one of the most deprived wards in the country...working with youngsters from families in real need.

Things will, of course, vary from town to town, but in the place I worked, fresh veg would have been useless....

It was not just that these families could not afford food - they couldn't afford to cook it. Some of them didn't have the necessary utensils - I knew families who shared cooking pans - you got to have a hot dinner (usually a fry up) on the day that it was your 'turn' for the pan.

In these area food banks would provide tinned goods - because those just needed opening - not even reheating. ...Fresh veg - potatoes, parsnips, squash, cabbage....dried carbs like rice and pasta.....even something like eggs.....these all need to be cooked, and the families I saw struggled with this.

For this reason, people were asked to donate tinned meat (hotdogs, or tinned ham) and tinned veg...baked beans and tinned spaghetti are both quite acceptable eaten cold, so were popular choices too.

So, yes it might have seemed like 'junk' food - especially if a packet of biscuits/crisps was put in for the children....but it was really chosen for practicality.

(And the food bank would also supply tin openers when requested!)

moneyistooshorttomention

Admits to never having heard of a household with only one saucepan before - still less sharing it with another household.

I guess things will vary between those who aren't normally broke and wouldn't for one minute regard themselves as potential food bank recipients (but something goes wrong with a well-planned life) and those households that are in a "share a saucepan" mode.

So - there's two strands to this. Feeding those who usually eat normally on the one hand. Feeding "share of a saucepan" households on the other hand.