Greater Vancouver Food Bank shows off wall of shame
Food faults include the unusable, impractical and often outdated
How about a bowl of Sexcereal to start your day? Or maybe for lunch a can of fermented mudfish in rice spiced with some Whoop Ass Hot Sauce?
Everything from canned alligator to armadillo meat to spotted-dick sponge pudding is among the unusable, impractical and often outdated food that comes in with the regular donations to the Greater Vancouver Food Bank.
Some of the unusual items that can never be used end up on the banks’s wall of shame, and on Wednesday the bank’s Ariela Friedmann talked about the problem they face in getting donations that have to be thrown out.
She holds up, as an example, a box of cake mix, so old they believe it was produced in the 1980s.
“We figure a member of the family passed away and the family went into the pantry and with very good intentions donated it to the food bank,” said Friedmann.
“When we put it up on the wall of shame, it has to be at least 10 years old.”
And while some of the items get a good laugh, Friedmann points out there is no humour when they have to sort through and then dispose of the donations that are past the expiry date or of little or no nutritional value. Besides expired goods, they get donations of things like chocolates filled with liquor, vitamins, even beer and champagne, which can’t be used.
“We are looking for healthy, nutritional food,” said Friedmann. They also look for cash donations.
Other items sitting in the waste bin are things like Preparation H, protein powders and sunscreen.
“The problem is now it costs us volunteer time to sort through all the items,” she said. “We pay more than $40,000 in costs to get it out of here to the landfill.”
Some of the problems come in packages such as flour that are opened and then sent to the bank.
They even get things like jars of peanut butter that have been opened and used.
Other items such as soft drinks with a high sugar content aren’t welcome.
“Our philosophy is if you wouldn’t eat it yourself, then don’t donate it to the food bank,” she said.
They even get dog-food donations, which they can give to clients provided it isn’t opened.