The Nutrition Initiative

By: Sharon Gruber, in-house nutritionist at Bread for the City.

Every month at Bread for the City, our clients receive three days worth of groceries from our food pantry. Most of these clients are elderly, disabled, or have small children. Their average income is under $7,000 a year.

Most of these clients also receive food stamps, but if your income is low enough to qualify to receive them, food stamps often still aren’t enough to keep food on your table week to week. Our provisions help clients cover that gap.

And recently, our provisions have been doing even more. In my first guest post here on Sustainable Food, I described our still-new Nutrition Initiative:

We know that it’s not enough to help hungry people eat. We must help them eat well.

And indeed, in the past year we’ve totally overhauled our pantry's menu.

Canned goods high in sodium and sugars are out; things like transfats and red meat are also out. Instead we provide fruits canned in their own juices; canned veggies without salt added; brown rice; and even fresh produce in every bag. We also cut out sugary cereals, pastry snacks, and candies (which are donated all-too-often by people with good intentions but maybe not nutritional consciousness). When we can, we offer things like canned tuna and salmon and ground turkey.

We did all this in the midst of skyrocketing food prices. The menu overhaul was really only possible because our food pantry staff have been doing this work for so long, at such a scale, that they're able to eek out those extra bits of savings and efficiency. In general, our clients responded positively: our food pantry coordinator tells me that one woman she’s known for years saw produce in her bag and looked up to say “it’s about time!”

Of course, that was at the outset of the economic downturn; since then, demand for food has gone up, corporate donations of food have gone down, and prices continue to rise. Bread for the City’s fundraising has actually held up remarkably well, but our costs are too much to bear. The organization is going through difficult changes; it’s going to be a tough few years for us, like all non-profits.

And yet, we have no plans to reduce our supply of food, or return to a cheaper, less healthful menu. In fact, we have confidence that we’ll make it through this period even healthier than before. In no small part, this is because of greater collaboration among our partners in the field.

Here’s an interesting example: we purchase the bulk of our food from the Capital Area Food Bank. They also supply 700 organizations with 20 million pounds of food for more than 383,000 people of food annually.

Recently, as part of their own nutrition initiative, the Food Bank has also been overhauling their menu to feature fresher foods and alternative products. As one of their two biggest purchasers, Bread for the City has a close working relationship with them - and they pay attention to the what's happening in our pantry.

When, in the course of our Nutrition Initiative, we decided that we wanted to carry only low-salt corn and green beans, we worked with the Food Bank to identify these new products and secure the supply lines. Likewise with brown rice and whole wheat pasta: these were items that Bread for the City decided we wanted to offer, and we are now able to receive them from up the chain at the Food Bank.

As a result, many of the Food Bank’s clients now purchase these alternative, healthier products for their own pantries. “It’s really working out well for our other agencies,” says Mark Kiriakou, the Food Bank’s Senior Director of Food Resources. And I am proud to see how the impact of our work is extending far beyond our immediate community.

(Photo credit: Tim Samoff on Flickr.)