Want to help with hunger? Here's how.

Trust people to know what they need

I see a whole lot of people talking about putting together “meals in a bag” for people struggling with food insecurity, and offering to go buy extra boxes of mac and cheese to donate to the food pantry, and thinking about how to help.

(Yeah, I know how preachy I am lately and how I’m not full of cute goat pictures and funny stories. I’ll get back to that when the house isn’t on fire. And maybe I’ll throw in some goats soon to distract us from the house being on fire.)

But being poor and hungry, and living in a family that doesn’t know what they’re going to do for food?

That’s something I know about.

And I know a lot of you will hate this, but I’m going to say it anyway: Just give people money.

Let them buy their own food.

They know what their kids will eat, if there are any allergies, whether they have gas to cook meals with, of they’re going to need a microwave or boiling water because the place they’re staying doesn’t have a stove.

They know whether they can only use cans of food because they don’t have access to a refrigerator, or whether they would rather buy a pre-made salad at the store so no one at work knows they’re struggling. No one wants to take an uncooked box of mac and cheese to work for lunch.

You don’t know what people need. They do.

Maybe they’re feeding their dad who’s missing two teeth, or their sister who’s got a peanut allergy. Maybe they’re living in a car. Maybe they’ve got tons of canned food and pasta at home, but their kids haven’t had fruit in a month. Maybe it’s their kid’s 10th birthday and all they want is a store-bought cake.

I have been poor. I’ve been homeless.

I’ve eaten nothing but pea soup for three days.

I worked at Pizza Hut as a waitress for three years and lived on personal pan pizzas. (“Five minutes or it’s free!” means that there’s a lot pizza thrown out.)

There were days where I couldn’t stand the smell of pizza and was still grateful I had it.

I know what it’s like to stand in the grocery line, watching my three little sisters while my mother paid with food stamps, pretending not to hear people mutter “ well, she must be eating pretty well, getting fat from our taxes.”

I know that when you’ve got nowhere to stay and no idea how things are going get better, but you’ve got $10 in your pocket, it feels better to get a soda, a bag of chips and a taco from a gas station than it does to go to the grocery store to look at food you can’t afford, can’t cook, and can’t store.

If you don’t know anyone who’s hungry or needs the cash, then yes, go ahead and help the food banks!

But don’t buy boxed mac and cheese at retail prices and donate it to the food bank. Don’t go to the grocery store and buy cheap canned goods and give them to the food bank.

The food banks also know what they need better than you do. Maybe they need fruit, or canned milk, or diapers. Maybe they just bought four pallets of pasta and they need tomato sauce.

If you give the food bank *cash,* they can buy a case of mac and cheese and it costs them 50 cents a box. If you’ve got $20 to help? You can buy ten boxes of mac and cheese, or you can give the food bank $20 and they can buy 40 boxes.

I’ve got my issues with food banks because I work with food rescue and food waste and in a perfect world they’d do better.

But I’ve got bigger issues with grocery stores who tell you to buy groceries at their marked-up prices and donate that, instead of just saying, “contribute $10 and we’ll buy pallets of apples and turkeys at cost to donate.”

I just talked to the Bellingham Food Bank, since my Scout Troop is looking for a place to volunteer in November, and they said they love volunteers, but what they really need is cash. There are millions of dollars of food that people will need.

They said if someone really wants to help, they should throw a fundraiser.

If you want to donate food anyway?

Give something with protein in it.

Canned tuna, beans, canned chili. They can buy pasta cheap.

I’m not trying to tell you what to do: Literally ANYTHING is better than letting people go hungry. If you like the idea of getting together with friends and putting together meal kits, go for it!

It’s way more fun to go shopping and donate groceries than it is to donate money to a food bank: You feel you’re doing something tangible and good.

Scout wants to make soup this month and give it away, and we will significantly increase our annual pecan pie deliveries. I like to massage my own soul by feeling helpful, too. We all do.

But the reality is, people are going to be going without food next month, or worse: They’re going to buy food, and not pay the rent in December. January is going to be FULL of eviction notices. So donate to places that buy food cheap and can distribute it, or just give people money.

And keep your moralizing and your “they might buy soda/chips/drugs if I give them cash” to yourself — they know better than you do what to do with it.

If you really equate hunger and poverty with iffy morals, then think about whether that also means that the rich and well-fed are morally superior. If they were, they’d be funding the food banks. If you know someone who’s hungry, give them money, or feed them. Also, as Scout says — maybe they have a friend or neighbor helping with food, but their kid really needs a jacket.

And this is critical: If you have to choose between rent and food, choose rent. Every time. Even if your kids are hungry.

Post in a Buy Nothing Group that your kids are hungry if you can’t find a stocked food bank, tell your evil sister-in-law that you don’t talk to that you need her to bring some groceries, don’t pay your cable bill, but keep a damned roof over your head.

If things are that tight, getting another place isn’t going to be happen. Do what it takes to keep housing, and just ask every resource you can for food. Don’t lose your house or electric or water over this — it’s almost impossible to come back from that.

Last suggestion: Find your local resources and post them. Normalize going to food banks and asking for help. Tell people you’re struggling, if you are, because maybe they’ll get over their pride and go to a food bank.

If you’ve got kids, see if you qualify for school meals and have them eat two meals a day there.

The hardest time for a whole lot of kids is during Thanksgiving week, Christmas and school holidays, when they don’t get two meals at school. Sometimes those are the only meals they get.

(And don’t come at me about how that’s not how much mac and cheese costs — my kids are gluten-free and dairy free so we pay like $6 a box and it’s terrible, so it’s not something we buy. It’s to make a POINT, people. Also, I can’t even describe the level of rage about our government using children as hostages in a budget negotiation, but that’s for this post.)

OK, stepping off soapbox. Back to farm stories or memes soon.