Purdue News
Purdue News
Most emergency feeding programs available to these people are small, operate on a shoestring, and rely on volunteers, so providing a safe, nutritious and acceptable meal for their diverse patrons can be challenging.
To help them meet the challenge, Purdue University has broadcast a national teleconference each of the past four years focusing on some of the issues. Hands-on workshops are built around each interactive videoconference. The most recent, "Safe Food for the Hungry '97," focused on diversity and choice. Other topics include food safety, nutrition and volunteer management.
"Ten percent of the total U.S. population uses the services of not-for-profit food distribution organizations to satisfy part of their nutritional needs," said Willie Burgess, Purdue Cooperative Extension Service specialist in foods and nutrition. "As many as 150,000 programs operate in the United States.
"In Indiana, almost 12 percent of families with children, 11 percent of senior citizens, and 40 percent of single mothers live below poverty level. Nearly 2,000 food assistance programs work to meet the nutritional needs of the hungry throughout the state.
"These programs need a readily accessible source for education and training to help them minimize the potential for foodborne illness and waste from improper food handling, maximize the nutritional value of the food they provide to their clients, and maximize the use of their volunteer resources."
Burgess said the first videoconference, in 1994, was downlinked to about 40 sites nationwide. Since then, there have been more than 200 downlink sites each year. "Safe Food" has reached 49 states and Canada. In Indiana, nearly 1,300 individuals have participated.
In Lafayette, Ind., Nancy Lannert, food services director at Lafayette Head Start, and Melissa Garber, dietitian for Midland Meals Inc., attended "Safe Food for the Hungry '97 -- A Focus on Diversity" to gather information, but with different purposes.
Lannert runs the food service at Head Start, where they've just begun to cook for the 220 children at the school. She was interested in the recipe book that's available through the Safe Food program. She also said the nutrition information and resource notebook she received will be helpful to her not only in cooking for the children, but also in providing information to their families.
"A lot of the families get their food from food banks," Lannert said. "The resource notebook has good information to share with the families. We do a weekly newsletter, so I wanted to get nutrition information and recipes to include in it."
At the school, she said, they try to include ethnic foods in their menu and expose the children to different foods. However, she said, some of the children have special dietary requirements -- such as no dairy, no citrus or no seafood -- for medical or religious reasons.
"It's good to see what resources are available," Lannert said.
The search for resources also brought Garber to this year's Safe Food program, the third one she has attended.
"I like the materials," she said. "I use them for instruction with our food service employees. It's helpful for them, but it's hard to get them here, so I take the material to them and instruct them."
Garber explained that Midland Meals has six kitchens serving Benton, Carroll, Clinton, Fountain, Montgomery, Tippecanoe, Warren and White counties. Their clients are over 60 years of age, and some have special diets. The service offers hot meals at congregate sites and also delivers them to homebound clientele. In the year ending June 1997, the program served 19,318 meals.
At some of the congregate sites, Garber said, Midland Meals offers a choice of foods for its patrons. But, she said, it's hard to do, especially for the home-delivered meals, because of the difficulty and time involved in sending out and then collecting menus to see what the clients want,.
But to John Arnold, executive director of Second Harvest Gleaners Food Bank of West Michigan, choice is a banner he waves, a mission he pursues, a war he wages.
"At our food bank, we stumbled on the issue of getting products that agencies won't use," he said.
Arnold explained that he usually has 2 million pounds of "America's favorite foods," but the mindset is that "poor people don't need snacks or treats." He has Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, English muffins and snack crackers, but agency representatives come in looking for powdered milk, white bread and saltines. Instead of fresh fruit they want canned, because it's easier to handle.
"They're keeping 80 percent of available food from the needy," he said.
One example Arnold used is a person who came in to pick up food for his church's food pantry. He complained to Arnold that the food bank didn't have any food. When Arnold asked what he meant, he said, "Well, you don't have any fruit cocktail." Arnold, indeed, was out of fruit cocktail, but offered canned peaches, applesauce, fresh fruit and other alternatives. The customer wouldn't be swayed, however, because his church always used fruit cocktail.
Arnold said the estimated need to feed the hungry in the United States is 11 billion pounds of food per year. He said the USDA estimates that 96 billion pounds are thrown away every year, yet food banks only handle a little more than 1 billion pounds. So he's on a crusade to get pantries to take whatever is available and offer those choices to their clients.
But it's been an uphill battle, he said, one reason being that people who provide food assistance often believe that their clients won't make good, nutritional choices.
Arnold's response? "It's not nutrition if they don't eat it."
He said a lot of the food he receives at the food bank, which provides food for 1,000 charity agencies in western Michigan, is donated by industry because the labels are smudged, glued on upside down, or perhaps have a misspelled word. He also said much of it is surplus food left over after a company's contracts are filled.
"We get holiday items after the holiday," Arnold said, "and promotional items after the promotion. Food banks often have what the client wants, but the agencies won't take it."
He said the Purdue videoconference was the first national discussion of this issue and he was happy to see it addressed on such a level. He said Safe Food focused on a number of other important issues for food assistance programs, such as proper handwashing and how time and temperature affect the shelf life of food.
"It was a very good video," Arnold said. "It made a good case, then it showed how. It taught this old dog some new tricks."
He said he hopes it had the same impact on viewers at the other 300 sites.
Source: Willie Burgess, (765) 494-8186; e-mail, willie@cfs.purdue.edu
Writer: Andrea McCann, (765) 494-8406; e-mail, mccann@aes.purdue.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; e-mail, purduenews@purdue.edu
