Is There Such a Thing as "Bad" Food When You're Hungry?

Just the other day I was handing out food from the back of a large truck. Not to hungry people, but to the volunteers and managers of various food pantries, soup kitchens and homeless shelters. The products we were distributing included chicken, potatoes, bread, lettuce and pastries. Many enthusiasts grabbed as much as they could of everything, stuffing the trunks of their station wagons or the back seats of their church vans. A few others turned stuff away, more often than not, the pastries. Free calories for the hungry were turned away. Not because they didn't have the space to store it. Not because their entire clientele was diabetic. They specifically told us that they didn't want to hand out unhealthy food to their guests.

My initial thoughts varied - I didn't know what to think. On the one hand, I wanted to praise them for seeming so responsible and I pictured little kids munching happily on apples and carrots. On the other I thought someone might be going hungry because of how picky her local soup kitchen manager was. Handing out cupcakes, especially on a regular basis, is definitely going to cause problems down the line, especially for children. At the same time, you're not just handing out healthy food versus crappy food, you're handing out value.

When you give them something of value, you help them save money elsewhere. It's not easy to get free food for the hungry - so if you have potato chips or any other less than healthy substance, give it to them anyways and they can use what little money they have to get some fruit and veggies instead. Or maybe they can trade or find some other use for the food. Pastries and soda are also a luxury, especially for those of us who can't afford wine and caviar - but that gives it a high value. In moderation it's important for the livelihoods of those less fortunate.

This is an issue raised at many hunger ending agencies and even recently on Leigh's blog. The question: healthy food vs. no food at all is a complex one and we humans in our eternal effort to understand and simplify things have the tendency to pick a side of the debate and denounce the other. This is very common, but I don't think that's the best way to approach it. You can't write a Do's and Don't's about feeding the hungry, but you can set priorities:

Give food to the hungry.

This should be a human right (and some places it is.) Starvation is worse than a sugar high. People need calories and you have to make do with what you've got sometimes. This is neither bad nor good, but it's better than alternatively letting people starve. It's like a medical emergency and this is the first aid - you may not be able to sew someone's limb back on, but you can slow the bleeding and dull the pain.

Give them nutritious food when you can.

Obviously nutritious food is better. If you have the capacity to make this choice then you must make the choice that is best for them - just like how a paramedic doesn't send a heart-attack victim home with a bottle of aspirin because it's easier than bringing them to a doctor.

Do more!

If after meeting those initial hunger priorities you're still capable of doing more - do it, the job's not done. Really, you don't want them to have to rely on this service. Help them get out of poverty. Teach them to catch that proverbial fish. Sticking to my metaphor - at the hospital the doctor creates a regimen for the patient to follow to prevent medical emergencies in the future. You don't get a pat on the back and a cheerful "see ya next time!" after a heart attack, do you?

I hope the people that turned down the pastries from our Food-Bank truck were capable of providing healthy alternatives to their guests. There's no excuse for letting people go hungry when some sort of food is available - at the same time, I commend them for thinking beyond the immediate needs of the hungry.

Now you can argue all day about the best practices of feeding the hungry but ultimately they shouldn't be hungry at all. It's wonderful those of us in the hunger-relief industry care so much about about feeding people properly and have the time to debate about it - but I think we get stuck on that too much. Food-banking is a tourniquet for a much bigger problem. Hunger is a symptom of poverty and poverty is caused by something else.

The first step to truly ending hunger is to define what causes and perpetuates poverty and address it.