From Food Charity to Recovery
Imagine you’re hungrier than you’ve ever been. So hungry you could eat a (insert your hyperbole of choice here).
So hungry you can hardly think — yet you must think carefully, because you need to figure out how to make something from nothing. That is, you need to make some food appear for your family, but there’s no money in your bank account. Nobody is going to eat until you figure this out.
Now imagine somebody has figured it out for you. Imagine walking into a warehouse full of fresh, delicious food. There’s milk, eggs, meat, fresh vegetables and fresh fruit. And they’re going to give it to you — for free.
This fantasy is now a reality for hungry people served by the Greater Vancouver Food Bank, a charity organization provid- ing food for people in Burnaby, New Westminster, Vancouver and the North Shore.
If you can imagine all of this except needing help to get food on the table, then think again. Inflation, stagnant wages and real estate mayhem have wreaked havoc on many people’s budgets. Combined with the pandemic and climate change events that have caused skyrocketing food costs, these factors are pushing many people — families, couples, singles, and seniors alike — over the brink and into household food insecurity.
Most of the GVFB’s clients never imagined themselves being unable to get enough food. But the truth is, it could happen to any of us. The GVFB served more than 16,000 people in 2021 and 4,711 of them were new clients. In 2019, it distributed 4.5 million pounds of food; in 2021, that number rose to 7.1 million. In 2021, it supported 119 community agency partners, up from 73 in 2019.
Fortunately for the GVFB’s current and future clients, this innovative operation has a fresh approach to hunger — anapproach that also solves several other food problems at the same time.
Reducing food waste? Check! Fair wages for farmers? Check! Improving nutrition and health? Check!
Until recently, the Greater Vancouver Food Bank operated like most other food charities, relying on food drives and donations of non-perishable pantry items. But this approach has some pitfalls. First, the food is often unusable: 30 per cent of food drive donations arrive damaged, spoiled, opened or expired. Dealing with this waste is labour-intensive and expensive; volunteers must unpack and compost the food and then recycle the packaging.
Equally problematic, the processed food that’s collected during food drives is generally low in nutritional value. GVFB clients — like all humans — need fresh, nutritious food.
In response to these problems, organizations working to reduce hunger throughout Canada have adopted new approaches that also reduce food waste — all while improving their clients’ well-being with healthy food.
This was the vision that David Long, a former globetrotting chef who arrived four years ago as CEO, brought to the GVFB. When he came on board, 80 per cent of the food being distributed was processed, the balance was fresh. Today more than 50 per cent of the food given out by the GVFB is fresh. He and his team of passionate employees and volunteers won’t rest until that figure reaches at least 80 per cent.
Driven by the vision of fostering healthy communities through fair and effective food systems, the GVFB works hard to sup- port sustainable food practices as well. By collaborating with local suppliers and farms, the team has found innovative ways to recover nutritious food for redistribution to hungry people.
Several recent changes at the GVFB mean the charity now provides more fresh, healthy food for clients. First of all, as operations director Craig Edwards explains, a few years ago it moved to a 30,000-square-foot warehouse with three times more cold storage than its previous location. That’s a game changer for fresh food. The new warehouse also boasts exten- sive shelving space, with room for approximately 1,000 pallets of food.
But where does all this fresh food come from? Well, a lot of it comes from other warehouses. “Pre-consumer” donations from large grocery chains come directly from their warehouses — without ever hitting store shelves. And then there’s the “post-consumer” goods — items in stores approaching their expiry dates. These, too, arrive at the GVFB warehouse, where they’re immediately distributed or frozen (depending on the item).
All this food used to end up in landfills as garbage.
But that’s only half the story of feeding people good food while reducing food waste. GVFB also partners with farmers to bring in fresh fruit and veggies. With its buying power and purchasing contracts, it receives nutritious food while farmers receive fair payment for their crops.
As well, the GVFB collaborates with ReFeed Canada, a unique farming model that practises “circular nutrition.” ReFeed receives countless pallets of imperfect and unsold produce, which they sort into food that’s safe for human consumption and food suitable as animal feed. The human-grade food is distributed to food banks and other organizations working to eliminate hunger. Leftovers are composted in worm farms that create organic fertilizer to regenerate local farmland.
Of course, fresh food means cooking, so the GVFB also provides resources to help its hungry clients turn all that fresh food into delicious meals. The first step is menu planning. But as everyone who’s tried meal planning knows, along with the benefits come challenges. That’s why the GVFB makes it easy for people to get meals on the table.
While developing its new menu planning approach, the GVFB worked with dieticians. The result is four monthly menus, along with three specialized children’s programs and one for seniors. Clients collect milk and eggs monthly, plus 10 to 14 grocery items weekly (with quantities appropriate for individuals, couples, or families) — including fresh fruit, vegetables, bread, yogurt, canned beans, soups, fish and stews, along with pasta, sauces, rice and peanut butter.
Cynthia Boulter, the GVFB’s COO, describes how they’ve prioritized getting the right food to the right people. For example, the seniors’ program, which provides food for 17 per cent of the people who use the food bank (67 per cent of whom are single), is designed based on seniors’ nutritional needs and provides seniors with fresh ingredients that are high in protein, iron and calcium, which are also nutritious, simple to prepare and easy to eat.
Besides menus, the GVFB works to empower clients with cooking skills by providing grocery items to afterschool programs and food classes in public schools. Jeanne Lefebvre, GVFB’s manager of community agencies, explains that it supports 120 of these community agency partners, including soup kitchens, faith-based programs and neighbourhood houses. The urgent need in communities shows clearly in the numbers: 32 new CAPs have come into the fold since July 2021. Of course, the food feeds hungry people in communities, but it also provides raw materials for members of these communities to develop cooking skills and it brings people together.
With a mission of providing healthy food for those in need, the GVFB is constantly looking for sustainable ways to get more food into homes. And it’s on track: In 2020 it distributed 4.9 million pounds of food, with that figure jumping to 7.1 million pounds in 2021. And of course, it’s not just any food — it’s nutritious, delicious food that provides people with comfort and joy instead of going to the landfill.
In its video, The Journey of an Apple, the GVFB reminds us that “it takes volunteers. It takes farmers. It takes trucks. It takes drivers. It takes warehouses. It takes forklifts. It takes menu planning. It takes food industry donors. It takes dedicated staff. It takes your support. It takes food. It takes more than food.”
And with all this in place, nobody has to go hungry, because the GVFB has it all figured out.
Greater Vancouver Food Bank
8345 Winston St, Burnaby, B.C.
foodbank.bc.ca | 604.876.3601 | @vanfoodbank
