When was the last time you were
hungry? I don’t mean standing in line for Sunday Brunch at the local diner and
wow doesn’t that short stack of pancakes look amazing kind of hungry. I’m talking about a distracting ache inside
your stomach, a constant dull pain making you lightheaded, and an anxiety that
spins inside, leaving you cranky, weak and miserable.
Right
now I’m not thinking about eating because I’m too busy brushing the powdered
potatoes off my shirt and wrestling with a carton of juice boxes that won’t
close, wondering whether the crease on that can of corn is bad enough for me to
toss it in the garbage pile. I’m at the
New Hampshire Food Bank near Manchester in the Salvage Sorting Room with a
dozen volunteers combing through pallets of food. I’ve joined the morning ritual, examining
hundreds of pounds of boxes of reclaimed goods from local supermarkets, making
sure what we have is good enough to pass onto the tens of thousands of our
neighbors who aren’t sure where their next meal is coming from.
The
numbers are sobering. There are close to
1.4 million residents in New Hampshire, and it’s estimated that one in nine
suffers from food insecurity – not starvation like you’d see on the news from
war-torn refugee camps – but very real and very much right next door. Defined as a household which at some point in
the year had limited or uncertain access to food, food insecurity is a huge
problem both in New Hampshire and across the country. Some suggest there are over 48 million Americans
who suffer from food insecurity. For a society
that’ll drive 500 miles for a McRib and then build a website about it, we
certainly get things backwards sometimes.
The
New Hampshire Food Bank was founded in 1984, and now in its thirtieth year,
it’s never been busier. “We delivered
8.5 million pounds of food last year and we’re on track to deliver about 10.5
million this year,” Bruce Wilson, the Bank’s Director of Operations tells me. Nancy Mellitt, my host for the day and the
Director of Development, chimes in, “That’s about 8.4 million meals, and we
think there are another 24 million meals we could be serving if we had the
resources.” That’s a lot of hungry Granite staters.
This
isn’t a corner food pantry with tidy rows of canned beans and a quaint pyramid
of feed sacks – the Food Bank is a sophisticated distribution hub and cavernous
warehouse that collects and distributes food to over 400 local agencies across the
state. As its slogan attests, “We Feed the Programs That Feed the State.” Half
of all the food and goods the soup kitchens, shelters, pantries and outreach
programs distribute comes through these doors.
Forklifts move pallets of food as eighteen-wheelers drop off reclaimed
supermarket goods, cars and vans arrive to pick up the day’s orders while quality
control employees inspect items before they leave the warehouse while administrators
process the dozens of online orders that come in weekly.
Nancy
introduces me to Erin D’Loughy, the Bank’s Volunteer Coordinator, who puts me
to work in the Salvage Sorting Room with twelve or so determined and focused
volunteers. The room’s filled with rows
of steel-topped tables where the donated food’s inspected, sorted and weighed, and
I join the sorting line. I learn quickly
that no one’s here to chat. Box after
box of assorted items – everything from flour to sauces to stuffing to paper
towels, Pop Tarts, coffee, cereal, cold medicine, pasta and beef stew – fly down
the rollers for inspection. Long-time
volunteers Bo and David give me a quick tutorial, the prevailing advice being,
“If in doubt, throw it out.” We grab the
boxes, check cans for dents, confirm expiration dates, see if we can save
ripped bags of flour (we can’t) and set aside anything that can be taped or
reasonably repackaged. As an aside,
would the owner of the Capri Sun Corporation of America please get in touch
with the Quaker Oatmeal people and confer on making better boxes? There isn’t a single box of those items that
remains intact as we sort.
We
toss about fifteen percent of what comes down the line, and Mel Gosselin, the
Food Bank’s Executive Director, who’s arrived to ensure I’m not making a mess
of things, tells me, “Everything we throw out gets picked up by pig farmers in
the area. That saves us money.” During a break, she explains that eighty five
percent of everything in the warehouse handles has been donated. “We’re not a state agency and we’re not a
federal agency – we don’t get any funding from the government to run this place.” It’s easy to see that this entire effort –
from the long-time volunteers to the steady whirr and beeping of forklifts and
trucks to the lean, talented staff that runs the center – is about New
Hampshire taking care of itself. “And I
wonder all the time if we’re failing or are we doing what we can with what we
have,” Mel says as the sorting restarts.
With
the salvage sorting done, I meet Paul Barker, the Warehouse Manager, who sets
me up with Mike Salinas. Cordial,
meticulous and a wizard of the forklift, Mike says, “Let’s fill this order.” Paul reminds me I can’t drive the forklift,
an excellent idea as I have visions of smashed jars of barbeque sauce and
kidney beans covering the warehouse floor.
Mike zips the forklift across the concrete while I pick the items – this
order’s for the Claremont Soup Kitchen, and I stack cartons of condiments,
coffee, jelly, juice, freeze-dried fish and a dozen other items. As we head into the deep freezer, Mike
insists I wear a loaner coat. “It’s a
lot colder than you think,” he says as I search for a few cases of Hot Pockets
and apple pies, and he’s right. It’s
minus 1 in here, the cold clearing out any of the exhaustion in my legs or head. Mike moves the pallets into a staging area
for tomorrow’s pickup, color codes and labels the items, and he’s off to pick
another order.
Before
the day ends, Nancy takes me upstairs to meet Chef Jayson McCarter. In addition to being a vital cog in the
state’s machinery to fight hunger, the Food Bank runs a culinary job training
program teaching underemployed or unemployed adults how to prep, cook, clean
and manage themselves in a commercial kitchen.
“We train fifteen students for eight weeks – for free,” Jayson tells me
as enormous pile of cauliflower is wheeled towards a steam-jacketed kettle,
more than I’ll ever eat in my lifetime. It
will be part of some of the 3,000 meals Chef Jayson, his assistant Chef Paul
Morrison and these busy students will prepare for distribution across the state.
In addition to the thousands of pounds of fresh produce, frozen meat and
groceries given away every day, the Food Bank prides itself on filling kids’ bellies
with hot, healthy meals prepared by dedicated pros.
The
Food Bank doesn’t waste time with the politics of hunger – not once did Nancy,
Bruce, Mike or anyone else suggest why
someone was hungry. Politicians and
pundits on both sides of the circus tent we call government today point
fingers, confident they know the root causes of this growing food insecurity or
blame the recipients for somehow cheating the rest of us out of something. Meanwhile, thousands of our neighbors want to
fill their stomachs so they can pay better attention in school or at work or
sleep at night without the worry of where breakfast’s coming from. Hungry doesn’t care about politics or
opinions - hungry wants to go away forever.
The New Hampshire Food Bank’s doing something about it every single
day. Food insecurity for one family is a
tragedy – food insecurity for tens of thousands of families is an
embarrassment, and every day this place tries to eliminate that shame we should
all feel while getting food to those who need it most.
Check out the New Hampshire Food Bank at www.nhfoodbank.org where you can learn about its programs,
make a donation or volunteer your time.
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