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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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.