Developing a plan to provide healthier foods through food banks and other emergency food providers

Reliance on food banks and other emergency food providers is increasing as unemployment rises in this stressful economic climate. Given the poor financial forecast, such reliance may be longer term, re-defining the need for so-called “emergency food” to meet nutritional needs beyond food sufficiency. In 2008, MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, a Jewish foundation dedicated to the alleviation of hunger, established a steering committee to identify strategies to encourage and support emergency food service providers in California to decrease unhealthy and increase healthy food offerings. Based on needs identified in a 2007 survey of MAZON's grantees, the Committee identified six streams of work and established working groups for three of these in the first year including: organizational change, food distribution, and nutrition education.

Subcommittees developed six case studies of successful organizational change towards provision of healthier foods, a tool evaluating the effectiveness of nutrition education materials and a guide for selecting healthy food parcels at food pantries. The tools were introduced at a statewide conference where representatives from over 60 hunger organizations provided structured feedback. Both institutional benefits and barriers were documented e.g., support of their boards of directors for considering nutritional objectives in their food donation and distribution policy, and development of adequate infrastructure to transport, store and distribute perishables.