Man will eat 14-year-old soup if $10,000 is raised for Parkdale food bank
Ask ‘would I eat this?’ before donating canned goods, daredevil says
The Parkdale Community Food Bank is garnering attention on social media following a “souper” interesting fundraising initiative after being donated 14-year-old soup.
In an Instagram post made Wednesday, the food bank announced that one of its community members has volunteered to eat a can of President’s Choice Chicken with Egg Noodle soup from 2006 if people donate $10,000 by Nov. 25.
“We posted the 2006 can on our Instagram story letting our community know to not donate items that are no longer safe for consumption,” said Kitty Raman Costa, operations manager at the Parkdale Community Food Bank. “One of our amazing community members, Oliver O’Brien, sent me a direct message and let me know that he would eat the soup if our community rallied together and raised $10,000.”
In preparation for what can potentially become a soupy mess, O’Brien says that his training regime has been “rigorous and relentless,” ingesting samples of expired canned food, doing bicep curls of Campbell’s chunky soup and meditating in front of an Andy Warhol canned soup painting.
“The thing about food is that most people agree they would prefer to consume it before it passes its expiry date — including Parkdale community food bank’s clients,” O’Brien wrote in an email to the Star. “Just because someone is having trouble getting food, doesn’t mean they deserve to be given something no one else wants to eat.”
People can donate money and comment on the Instagram post — either to encourage O’Brien to eat the expired soup, or to save him from the challenge.
“This is huge for an organization such as ours that receives no consistent government funding” says Raman Costa. As of Saturday, almost $5,000 has been raised in total, with a majority of people donating to encourage O’Brien eat the old soup.
When asked what would happen if O’Brien was saved from eating the can of soup, she says that the food bank can’t control his choice, but “he may still eat the soup if he’s feeling hungry.”
It is unclear where the donation came from, though the food bank said that they have a history of being donated expired items, the oldest being a packet of jello from 1997.
“If you’d like to donate some non-perishables, just consider this — would you eat it yourself?” O’Brien adds.
A recent report found that Toronto-area food banks have been seeing a surge in usage over the summer due to economic instability. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, food bank use had already increased by five per cent compared to last year, with close to one million visits in Toronto.
According to O’Brien, the Parkdale community food bank with a small staff of four has seen 30 per cent increase in usage over the course of the pandemic.
In addition to raising money in this rather uncanny fundraiser, the food bank is also hosting a toy drive from Nov. 23 to Dec. 13. Unwrapped toys can be dropped off at the Roncesvalles United Church near Roncesvalles and Wright Ave., Monday to Thursday from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m., and Sunday from12 p.m. to 3 p.m.