Today’s speaker was Chris Costanzo, the founder and editor of Food Bank News, an online publication dedicated to seeking and sharing knowledge of best practices about hunger relief among a national audience which she started in 2019. The website receives 10,000 visits a month and the bi-weekly newsletter has 7,000 subscribers. Chris spent decades as a magazine and newspaper editor, reporter and freelance writer, and more recently began volunteering at her local food pantry and hunger-relief agency. She lives in NJ and is a Cornell graduate.Chris presented a highly informative discussion about the Nation’s national food banks. She had four main points. First, the US government’s program to fight food insecurity is actually ten times bigger than the nation’s combined food banks which number about two hundred (the smaller food pantries number in the many thousands). The Government’s program, SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) is a $100B operation. The various state food banks distribute roughly $10B of food. Second, the food doesn’t always go where it is most needed, particularly in rural areas. This is because rural areas often don’t have the necessary infrastructure for distribution and the qualified people to operate the system. Third, and perhaps the most amazing factor, roughly 40% of the nation’s available food supply goes to waste. There is considerable spoilage due to a variety of issues such as transportation, perception (e.g., grocers rejecting consignments due to appearance), restaurant uneaten food, weather, simply unsold perishables, etc. It is estimated that around 100B pounds of food is wasted each year. The food banks are working with national and regional truckers to reduce this wastage with a goal of rescuing an additional one billion pounds of food a year – currently, about four billion pounds of rejected or past-sell-date food is delivered to national food banks. Finally, the SNAP program and the food banks are trying to move away from simply offering calories for more nutritious foods, i.e., less sugar and salt and more vegetables and fruits. Medicare is also part of the process of emphasizing nutrition over calories.
Chris has created a most valuable asset which is helping to optimize a system that clearly is sub-optimal. Anyone can access Chris’ newsletter at: www.foodbanknews.org . We thank Chris for her visit.