The Central Missouri Food Bank’s Columbia location served more than 11,000 needy people in the month of August.  The food bank set a new record for clients served in each of the past three months.  This time last year, the food bank was serving between 8500 and 9000 people a month. 

The center averaged between 150 and 200 new clients every month since June. 

Boone county has had the lowest unemployment in Missouri for the past two years, but we are they still see people coming out.

Corporate donations and community food drives really help, but it just doesn’t keep up with the increased demand.  The Central Missouri Food Bank, like the Northern Arizona Food Bank, is reaching out to local hunters and gardeners to boost its stocks of protein and fresh produce – key components to the Food Pyramid.

Patrons have come to ask if there is fresh game like deer available as there are so many health benefits to protein from free range animals as well as from fresh fruits and vegeatables locally grown.

The Missouri Department of Conservation’s “Share the Harvest” program donated 2.1 million pounds of meat to food banks in the state.

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Yet another pilgrimage.  Some folks have to visit every continent.  Others might have the need to see every baseball park across the US.  For me…it’s Food Banks and niche non-profits who have gotten creative. 

The alarm rings at 4:00 am on a Monday.  I’d like to say I left Monday morning…but really…it’s still night in my mind; having had a long nap that night.  Flight leaves at 6:30 from CA and it is already 8:30 in Chicago.  Add 6 hours for the flight and I am not unpacking until about 2:00pm in my hotel room downtown Chicago.

But what a beautiful day.   When you see a movie of downtown Chicago whether it’s contemporary like “Ferris Bueller” or a period piece like “The Untouchables,” the lighting seems almost too bright…too Hollywood.  When you walk along the Chicago River on a sunny day in August that light is real as the river creates a space you don’t see in New York or LA.  Maybe it was lack of sleep or the idea that we were in the heartland of America’s Mid-west, or the thought of who we had planned to visit that day, but that light felt so hopeful.

I don’t know Chicago like I do New York or LA, but we drove to the south side of Chicago.  There were open spaces and parks, brown stones and the same “L” that courses through downtown but the energy felt different.  There were empty shopping carts in the parks, broken glass on the sidewalks, litter floating in ponds and the same “L” rolled by but with a deafening sound. 

We drove under the “L” through the light that casts its melancholy shadows.  There were work crews donning orange vests, boarded up buildings, overgrown lots and abandoned vehicles.  

Like traveling through the desert, we came upon our destination; Vital Bridges, a center for AIDS outreach, that appeared like an oasis.  We walk in to see a small but very busy staff.  We met with a Registered Dietician who used her training to bring in the needed nutritional food that clients with HIV must have.  She covers the entire food pyramid being mindful to: low sugar, good fats, organic produce and dairy, and whole grains while under the constraints of a very tight budget.

Imagine contracting HIV and becoming too weak to work, losing your job, your home and having to choose between food and medication.  This center serves clients that have renal failure and diabetes on top of a whole host of other side effects of HIV.  Her program is designed to supplement the diet of her customers, but admittedly, as she serves those well below the poverty line; her food is often stretched to be the sole source of nutrition for her clients.  She does her best to accommodate everyone out of her pantry that is 600 sq feet.

Today, the organization serves nearly 2,000 people impacted by the HIV epidemic annually. Since their founding in 1988, Vital Bridges has provided more than 10 million meals, 600,000 nights of shelter and 250,000 hours of counseling to over 10,000 clients.  When you think that a non-profit seems to barely have enough to support its client base, they push the boundaries.  This center’s goal is not only to continue to support all those individuals that come to them weekly, but to increase their outreach to eventually include all clients with debilitating and incurable diseases throughout Chicago.

Every time I see what non-profits do…I leave thinking: “wow”….I have to spread the word.

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There are so many types of non-profits involved with food donations.  When you consider adding an additional component of food distribution under disaster and emergency relief, things become complicated and costly.

If we look at recent disasters: earthquakes in Haiti and Mexico, wild fires in California and Western Canada, floods in Tennessee and Pakistan, Hurricane Katrina or the Tsunami of 2004; there are a few things in common.  Infrastructure is damaged making it difficult to distribute food.  Utilities are taken out which affects water, electricity and gas.  This makes it impossible to refrigerate or heat raw items or prepare foods that require water. 

All of these disaster areas are much like war zones.  Reinforcements must come in and aid the wounded.  Meals must be distributed by hand, individually portioned packed and must be ready to eat with little to no preparation with consideration to health content.  Shelters have to be constructed.  All of this before we even start to re-build.

In our daily lives, we take all these things for granted: clean accessible water supply, free-flowing electricity, gas and readily available sources of healthful food.

When we give to a disaster cause or to an agency that supports disasters, think about how many different components we are trying to replace under so many difficult constraints.  Whether it be here in the US or abroad the effort is entirely reactive as we never know when, where or how a disaster will strike.

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WOW!  Compelling.  Moving.  Inspiring.

200,000 meals handed out in one summer….a summer with 3 weeks remaining…in one city, San Antonio…to children.

San Antonio is about 16% the size of New York, and handed out 36 million of pounds of food last year, 2009.

This summer, this one food bank handed out up to 5,000 meals; breakfast, lunch and snacks, at over 120 different sites.

In 2003, they handed out 34,000 meals for the entire summer.  With 3 weeks left to the summer here in 2010, they are projecting 260,000 meals – almost 8 times more than 2003. 

Nutrition is still an important component of the meals handed out as all items are approved by the USDA and meet Fruit/Veg, Bread/Grain, Milk or Meat/Meat Alternative requirements.

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I just read a great quick Blog from the Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara, Second Harvest Blog. 

There was a food show held earlier this month by the National Association of College and University Food Services in San Jose.  As this convention was wrapping up the Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara staff quickly rounded up 24 unsuspecting volunteers along with carts and bins to collect extra samples and food that wasnt handed out .  Within a short order of time, 8,000lbs of food was collected!

Having been to a few food shows in my time, there are so many booths with so many samples handed out.  Since no vendor wants to run out, everyone ends up bringing three times what they need for the show.

This solution helps feed the hungry and reduces the carbon foot print caused from shipping all unused samples back a supplier office or warehouse….or worse the waste caused by disposing of first quality food.

What a Great Idea!

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Maybe you are too young to remember Arsenio Hall…hoo hoo hoo (pumping fist right now like Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman”…ah the 80’s…)  Arsenio had a part of his show where he talked about things that made us go hmmmm? 

I was reading through some nutrition facts at UC Agriculture and Natural Resources.  This is a great little website with some very interesting facts about obesity, food trends and healthcare costs attached to recent movements in eating habits.

What struck me in particular was the growth in obesity rate among younger children.   According to the website, over the past three decades, the childhood obesity rate has more than doubled for preschool children aged 2-5 years and adolescents aged 12-19 years, and more than tripled for children aged 6-11 years.   

At present, approximately 9 million children over 6 years of age are considered obese and 15 percent are considered at risk of becoming overweight.  More than 60 percent of young people eat too much fat, and less than 20 percent eat the recommended five or more servings of fruits and vegetables each day.

The thing that made me go hmmmmm…is that these same children who are becoming obese are also at the same time mal-nourished because of the empty calories they consume!

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So dear reader, if you didn’t already know most Food Banks across the country share similar programs to tackle the fight against hunger.  There are several programs specific for children who are food insecure:  Kid’s Summer Feeding Programs, Kid’s Back Pack Programs and Kid’s Café.  The goal is to feed children outside of School Feeding Programs.  The most critical time is in the evening, on weekends and over the summer.

St Mary’s in Arizona takes these programs to a whole new level.  They are involved in all the programs I listed above, but go beyond hunger outreach.  As a part of a community service drive, state inmates also participate in the fight against hunger.  While learning how to work within a large warehouse, many of the inmates help assemble boxes that feed families with children, fill kid’s back packs with food and work in the kid’s café producing hot meals.

At the end of our visit, we toured a working culinary learning facility complete with a conference style class room, full kitchen and food prep area.  Participants who are out of work not only get boxes of food to feed their families, but receive a culinary certificate after nine weeks of instruction while they work in the kid’s café preparing hot meals for children and the elderly.  The culinary facility also includes an employment center where participants are connected with hiring managers from local restaurants, hotels, resorts and kitchens throughout Phoenix.

St Marys really shows us that food is not only good for the body, but also good for the soul.

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Top ten rules to shop by!

This week, a couple of my colleagues and I had a discussion about the nutritional highlights of  Triscuits, and whether we thought they were healthy or not.  This got me thinking about how confusing the world of nutrition can be. Have you ever gone to the grocery store only to be totally overwhelmed with all the food choices? There might be 8 choices of cracker on the shelf, but which should you buy? There is so much nutrition information (and misinformation!) in the market place that it can be confusing to know where to start, let alone what foods to cook for your family.  Michael Pollen, a food writer extraordinaire, has a knack of being able to translate complicated nutrition information into no-nonsense recommendations that work. Below are his rules for grocery shopping, I suggest you make a copy and take it with you the next time you go to the store. If you follow his rules you’ll be purchasing and eating ‘real’ food most of the time - and this is the simplest way to a healthy diet.

1.     Don’t buy anything your Great Grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. Like anything orange that isn’t salmon, a carrot or an orange.

2.     Avoid products containing ingredients that cannot be found in an ordinary pantry. Even better, avoid anything that contains more than five ingredients. Better still, if you can’t pronounce most of the ingredients, you don’t want to eat them.

3.     Don’t buy anything that lists sugar in its first three ingredients and no fructose corn syrup! Not even a little.

4.     Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay away from the middle - that’s where most of the processed food is shelved.

5.     If it came from a plant, buy it (and eat a lot of it). If it was made in a plant, pass it by.

6.     If it says lite, low-fat, or non-fat on the package, put it down. You’ll be more satisfied if you eat a little bit of the real thing.

7.     Avoid food that is pretending to be something it is not. This includes soy-based mock meats.

8.     Food making health claims on the package is not food you want to buy. Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about your health.

9.     Avoid food that is advertised on television. And remember, if it is delivered through the window of a car, it is not food.

10.  Get out of the supermarket. Look to farmers markets for the majority of your food and snacks.

We are Good Source Non-Profit Solutions.  We have been partnering with the non-profit community since our company’s inception in 1989.  We work exclusively with food banks, food pantries, soup kitchens, Share programs, Meals on Wheels, relief organizations and other non-profit agencies in order to fully understand the unique needs of this community.

We are excited to get our blog up and running and to have the opportunity to reach out to you, our customers, in a new and unique way.  We are looking forward to learning from you as we will be collectively sharing industry insights that we think will be of interest to helping your organization grow.

So, who will be contributing to the blog? Ilona Fordham and Rene Flohr will be the main blog contributors; Ilona is a registered dietitian and loves all things to do with food while Rene has been involved in sales and retail management for over a decade. Other contributors from our Non-Profits Team include: Laura Roche, Maureen Richards, Matt Story, Gaby Escobedo, and Dan Harrison. You’ll get to know us all a lot better as time goes, but for now, know that we’re a pretty close knit group that loves sharing ideas and best practices that support our customers’ business growth.

We welcome any and all comments so please subscribe to our blog and feel free to contribute.