More than 300 schools are partnering with the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma to identify students in need by giving the children backpacks while working with the childhood hunger programs coordinator for the food bank.

Each school has a coordinator, who trains teachers and staff how to spot a chronically hungry student. For example, cafeteria servers might spot a child hoarding food or stashing it in his pocket.  A teacher might notice excessive questions about how long until lunch. A counselor may hear about meals prepared by older siblings or the elementary schoolchildren themselves.   These are all tell-tale behaviors that there are children going to school hungry everyday or enough days where the child becomes food insecure worrying about if they can count on getting a meal when hunger strikes.

Some kids have vitamin, mineral and protein deficiencies. Most of the signs are in the child’s eyes: puffy eyes from a lack of protein or dry eyes with dark circles and cracked lips from not enough vitamin A, C, D or E.

The Food 4 Kids backpacks from the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma contain everything from peanut butter to pudding to peaches, and children receive them for every weekend and school holiday as the school meal programs only cover feedings for when school is in session. 

The focus of the back pack program is to not only provide the necessary caloric intake for sustained energy and growth but to also meet as many of the Food Categories on the Food Pyramid as possible: Milk/Dairy, Meat/Meat Alternatives, Fruits/Vegetables and Bread/Grains for proper brain, organ and muscle development.

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The government released reports today that indicated that over-all inflation has been kept in check during our recovery….minus the increase in cost in food staples, food commodities and energy.   That’s a BIG Minus as we all need to drive to work, heat our homes and feed our families.

The fact is; steadily rising food costs are changing the very ways we feed our families.

The worst case of food inflation in nearly 20 years has more Americans giving up restaurant meals to eat at home. We’re buying fewer luxury food items, eating more leftovers and buying more store brands instead of name-brand items.

Feeding a family of four often means scouring grocer ads for the best prices, taking fewer trips as a way to save gas and simply buying less food, period.

Record-high energy, corn and wheat prices in the past year have led to some shocking reactions to prices in the grocery aisles. The average price of a loaf of bread has increased over 30 percent since 2005. In the last year alone, the average price of carton of eggs has increased almost 50 percent.

Ground beef, milk, chicken, apples, tomatoes, lettuce, coffee and orange juice are among the staples that cost more these days.

Soaring prices are causing shoppers to rethink long-held habits such as store loyalty.

Wal-Mart and other supercenters that sell food are on the climb representing almost 25% of the market share.

Those who can’t absorb the added expenses are increasingly seeking help from food pantries and food banks that distribute nearly two billion pounds of food and grocery products each year.

Many of the food banks I have spoken with have experienced anywhere from a 35%-60% increase in demand over last year.  How they stretch to meet their demand amazes me constanty.

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I will tell you as I write this entry that our guide at the Greater Chicago Food Depository said that he gave us the longest tour since he has been at the food bank – about 5 years!  We are a curious bunch and really want to learn the ins and outs of how different food banks operate.

Here is a little history on the Greater Chicago Food Depository. The Greater Chicago Food Depository was established in 1979 and has just celebrated their 30th anniversary.  They are a nonprofit food distribution and training center providing food for hungry people while striving to end hunger in their community. The Food Depository distributes donated and purchased food through a network of 650 pantries, soup kitchens and shelters to 678,000 adults and children in Cook County every year. The Food Depository has grown through the years—from 471,000 pounds of food and 85 member agencies in its first year to distributing 66 million pounds of nonperishable food and fresh produce, dairy products and meat, the equivalent of 135,000 meals every day.

Through the years, the organization has moved four times, developed an array of innovative programs and become one of the world’s leading food banks. Since its start, the Food Depository has distributed close to 1 BILLION pounds of food, touching the lives of millions of Chicagoans.

When we think of donations to food banks, we think of food or monetary donations to purchase food.  We don’t always think about the capital needs that non-profits have and how they can transform a community in so many ways.  In my last blog I spoke about Vital Bridges with a 600 sq ft pantry and maybe 2,800 sq ft dedicated to the total facility.

The Greater Chicago Food Depository is 280,000 sq ft.  Built just a few years ago, this food bank was designed to be nothing other than a food bank.  Modeled after the First Food Bank, St Mary’s of Phoenix, AZ that was established in 1969.  These 2 food banks are on the cutting edge of how they service their respective communities in many ways.

We walk into the atrium and take stairs to the second floor to a culinary academy.  The Greater Chicago Food Depository offers programs in a classroom and kitchen setting to acquire 3 levels of culinary training.  Each culinary student learns the workings of food preparation and handling in a classroom and experiences practical training within a live kitchen.  The kitchen is modern and state of the art.  With onsite chefs, this team of culinary students prepares hot meals for the hungry.  Daily, they prepare hundreds of meals for children and seniors packaging them off for another team that distributes the meals throughout the Chicago area.  Once a student has graduated from the academy, the Greater Chicago Food Depository will help each individual in their onsite career center with job placement for up to 12 months after certificate completion.

As we walk through the facility we witness the warehouse in action.  There are over 150 employees working at the Greater Chicago Food Depository with hundreds of volunteers that arrive each week and others working to achieve training certificates in warehouse responsibilities: picking, packing, proper food handling and storage, fork lift operation, delivery, re-pack and assembly.  This facility looks and feels like a food manufacturing operation.

Throughout our visit I noticed many goals written on walls, in rooms and hallways.  As we were leaving, I remarked on one of the last goals and that goal was to “Establish Measurement Beyond Pounds that Reflect our Impact.”

Each food bank across the country is measured in how many pounds they donate…but what I saw at the Greater Chicago Food Depository went way beyond what could normally be “measured” and that is the effect on the community through: local employment, training, the culinary academy, hot meals for kids and seniors, emergency relief boxes for the Emergency Services of Chicago.  The list goes on and on…and it is so much more than pounds of food.

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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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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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If you are at all involved in Food Banking or Non-Profit Food Donations, you have probably have heard of St Mary’s Food Bank of Arizona (www.firstfoodbank.org) .  I made my first pilgrimage to the World’s Largest and Oldest Food Bank just recently.  It was only 110 in Phoenix, but it was “Dry Heat.”  I felt like I was running in from the rain as I headed to the nearest air conditioned building with the same urgency.

67 million pounds of food.  67 MILLION POUNDS OF FOOD.

As we toured the facility I kept repeating those 5 words in my mind.  Starting with one location 43 years ago in 1967, in Phoenix; St Mary’s has formed an Alliance and now has 5 locations in Phoenix, Flagstaff and Surprise. 

From one location alone, St Marys hands out 35,000 Shelf Stable Pantry Boxes every month to their clients.  They hand out 3 types of Pantry Boxes weighing 25lbs, 50lbs and 75lbs for a family of 2, 4 or 6.  On top of the shelf stable box, each client gets an equal amount of fresh produce and dairy.  Because so much food is handed out at one time, each client uses a large grocery cart with a volunteer who assists with loading and unloading.  This happens 35,000 times a month!

So much more to tell as we spent a few days in Arizona.  Stay tuned for the next blog entry…

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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.