Melinda‘s story as told to Peter Kamajian
How wonderful it is to help! I smile internally as the cashier scans my items at the grocery—can after can of green beans, fruit cocktail, and condensed soup, all at retail price. Doesn’t it feel great to be helping, I repeat to myself as I heft the bags and make my way to the car. It’s time to make a difference, I promise as I walk under the office banner that announces this week’s food drive. I deposit my payload of cans onto the ever-growing pile of similar foods, all canned or boxed, shelf-stable and highly processed. My good deed completed, satisfied that I was able to improve the lives of (hopefully) a dozen or so people with my contribution, I move on to my work for the day.
As a sociologist, caring about the problems of the world is the focal point of my career. Acting on such problems is a natural impulse; of course, I already do that every time a food drive rolls around. As I study societal issues on a grand scale, however, I can’t help but feel like I could be doing more. It’s common knowledge in my field that food insecurity is a symptom of larger institutional problems, and given the massive scale of hunger in America, it gnaws at me that there might be a more efficient way of helping stop it—should I be buying way more cans? Handing food out myself? Neither of these seem sustainable given my time, budget, and the scale of the problem.
One evening I did a little research, and discovered a local food bank that hosts a program which seems promising—it says its goal is to stop hunger not just by giving out food but by teaching people how to break out of the cycle of hunger and poverty. The idea of “Help for Today AND Hope for Tomorrow” really resonated with me. I’d spent so much effort giving people fish and feeding them for a day—was this the proper way to teach them to fish and feed them for a lifetime?
I’m excited to see inside a food bank—having given so many cans over the years, I look forward to seeing where they all end up before distribution. I’m expecting a pile of packaged products in a storage room somewhere, possibly adjoined to the food bank’s offices. When I arrived, however, that perception vanished; numerous semi-trucks rolled past my windshield as I pulled in, connecting to the same building I was told contained the food bank offices. I get inside, and after some introductions I am taken into the warehouse. What I encounter makes my jaw drop; my preconceived notion of the scale of food bank operations are completely shattered.
A sea of ceiling-high shelves stretches out before me, each stacked with multitudes of food and supplies. I see an empty space on one shelf, easily large enough to contain twice my yearly contribution of cans. I feel like a speck of dust in such a huge space, and the realization of how small my donations have been in the grand scheme of things is instantly humbling. Notably, very little of the food stored here is canned; if it is, those cans are stacked together and wrapped on massive pallets. Taking in the panoply of food before me, I know there is indeed much more I should be doing.
A few weeks have passed since that initial induction. I’ve spent that time working with volunteers at the food bank, organizing food to be distributed and learning the intricacies of the fight against hunger. I learned that, while still helpful, my full-retail method of donating cans is far from efficient—giving the cash I would’ve spent on cans would allow the food bank to obtain significantly more material from farm and wholesale sources. It’s also here that I encounter some differences in the way people perceive food donation.
We stand around a table loaded with food. Myself and the other dozen or so volunteers are chatting about the various options available to recipients, and I recognized an unsettling amount of judgment coming from others and, indeed, myself.
The spread of food includes lots of sugary bakery items, like donuts and birthday cakes. Coincidentally, these items are the most demanded from the people we’re giving them to—as I listen to the continued requests for these baked goods, I can’t help but think wouldn’t it be better if you went after the healthier stuff? And I’m not alone—I overheard several people wondering the same thing. In a life where nutrition can be scarce, why opt for the item that’s full of carbs and sugar?
I knew this way of thinking was wrong, but I couldn’t quite articulate why—and then it hit me. When grocery money is tight, birthday cakes are a luxury; however, every kid is taught that you celebrate a birthday with cake. The two are so intrinsically linked in our culture that having a cakeless birthday—or even a birthday with no sweets whatsoever—is indicative of something being wrong with your celebration. Does falling below a certain level of income mean you stop having birthdays? The people here to receive food are aware that cake isn’t very nutritious; it’s the cultural value of having access to these kinds of goods that makes a difference. Sometimes the help is also the hope and it comes in the form of a birthday treat.
Returning from my time at the food bank, I feel humbled—not just by the scale of their operations, but by the realization of my own misconceptions and judgments. Who am I to put my own nutritional outlook on strangers receiving food? Sentimentality is a personal thing, and I have to accept that different foodways are meaningful to different people. Armed with this new perspective, I grapple with discovering my true role in the world of food distribution. As an educator and researcher, one thing is for certain: I need to think a lot bigger than “cans.”
As time passes, I incorporate more work on food insecurity in my classes and discussions with other academics. At conferences, I do my best to enlighten my peers about how they can help, especially those who may have not had the experience of large-scale food distribution. My role as an educational leader is to bring these issues into the public consciousness. Every choice we make impacts the supply chain. Everything matters from the systemic nature of food insecurity to the simple fact that every kid deserves the affirmation, celebration, and hope of a birthday cake.
This story originally appeared in Facing Resource Insecurity, a publication of The Facing Project that was organized by Second Harvest Food Bank of East-Central Indiana.
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