Step 2: It's Time to Spring Clean Our Pantries

Before we get into the next step towards helping impoverished families gain access to food, we must remember to put first things first by keeping in mind our priorities. When we remind ourselves of the purpose behind this movement, we can work to execute priorities of highest importance, while also retaining our personal integrity (Covey, 2020). Our highest priority is to help our neighbors that struggle with hunger by fulfilling our own responsibilities as local activists -- This includes changing our own habits at home and seeking ways we can help support those in need. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (2022), the average American household wastes 30-40% of food they obtain and this is partly due to the fact that was are throwing away our uneaten foods at home instead of allowing someone in need to have it. Have you ever over-prepared too much food at home only for the leftovers to sit in your fridge for weeks collecting mold? What about realizing you are not going to eat the 6 cans of baked beans you bought on special that were left to be forgotten in your pantry, resulting in them getting thrown out? 

 

According to Feeding America (2022), "food rescue, or food recovery, is the practice of collecting high-quality food that would otherwise go to waste and distributing it to people facing hunger" (para. 8). Throwing away uneaten foods from our homes does not align with our ethics and values as local activists fighting to end hunger. Wasting food that could be someone else's next meal is not only unethical, but it shows a clear lack of empathy for those that suffer from hunger. We need to strive to work our way towards practicing food recovery in our households by approaching this priority with empathy and remembering that whatever food we may think to be of low value to us, is of significant value to the next hungry child, mother, father, or homeless individual.

 

If we can all collectively agree that throwing away edible food is wrong and that it makes a negative impact on food insecurity, then we can understand the pressing need to start being more conscious about what actions we take with the unused food in our homes. We need to start donating our unused foods to not only promote food recovery, but to also benefit the overall well-being of impoverished families so that they can live long, healthy lives and be contributing members of society. This need was prompted by a discussion I had with my partner after an attempt to organize our food pantry--we realized we were never going to eat the surplus of canned chicken noodle soup we had leftover from our camping trip over a year ago. It filled us with guilt to throw away so much food knowing that we live in a community with an astonishingly high homeless population.

 

CALL TO ACTION! As local activists and concerned citizens, I urge you to conduct a spring cleaning of your own within your kitchen. Instead of throwing away food you realize is not going to be eaten, donate it to your local food bank in order to give it directly to people in need. HERE I have provided a link to FoodFinder where you can locate nearby food banks to donate your uneaten food to and a picture of a list of foods below that most food banks accept and are in desperate need of. If you take participate in this call to action, please comment below about your experience, thoughts, and feelings or simply repost the list of foods with the FoodFinder link on one of your social media platforms to spread the word!

 Information References

Covey, S. R. (2020). The 7 habits of highly effective people. Simon & Schuster.

Feeding America. (2022). How we fight food waste in the US. Feeding America. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://www.feedingamerica.org/our-work/our-approach/reduce-food-waste 

U.S. Department of Agriculture. (2022). Food Waste Faqs. USDA. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs

Media References

Feeding Missouri (2015). What do food banks need? [Image]. Feeding Missouri. https://feedingmissouri.org/what-do-food-banks-need-2/