How To Donate Food
All over the world, millions of people suffer from the lack of food. Famine, conflict, the environment, and poverty all lead to a worldwide crisis in food supplies. Many diseases and deaths are caused by the lack of nutritious and healthy food for the poor and the hungry worldwide. The inability of millions of people to buy or produce food is an international crisis that is still being resolved to this day.
You may not think of soggy fries or yesterday’s leftovers as causes of the worldwide food crisis, but every bit of wasted food leads to people going hungry. While you can’t solve world hunger all by yourself, donating food is the most meaningful thing you could do to help alleviate hunger in your community. Here are some ways that you can help out:
Donating Food Outright
Many hungry people live on rubbish tips and leftovers from restaurants or fast food places. Leftovers from garbage cans and restaurant tables are not only lacking in nutrients and taste, but eating them also make people lose a lot of their dignity and self-respect. There are many ways that you can donate food to hungry people:
Give away extra groceries or food items to vagrants on the street. Ready-to-eat meals, canned food, or even a chocolate bar are very much appreciated by hungry people.
If you can afford it, buy an extra take-out meal to give to a hungry person huddled outside the restaurant.
If you have a lot of leftovers from a party, pack the food up in plastic containers. Send the food to a church or charity for their feeding programs.
Many grocery stores make available bags of food pre-packed for a family. When you visit the store to purchase food for you own family, buy one of these bags and the food will go towards another family to make sure they have dinner tonight, too.
Volunteer Work
Many charitable agencies and organizations help communities look after their hungriest members. Many of them are understaffed, and lack the resources necessary to pay people to do full-time work. Here are some ways that you can help these agencies and organizations continue with their good works:
Soup kitchens. Churches and parishes often run soup kitchens to feed hungry people who come by for free food. The food may not be a feast, but it helps many people fend off hunger and malnutrition. If your church or parish runs a soup kitchen, you can help cook or distribute the food to hungry people.
Donations in kind. Groceries do not cost much; your grocery bills are high because of the many expensive and unnecessary things you buy for yourself. An extra bag of rice, some extra cans of potted meat, or a few packets of instant noodles or frozen vegetables are cheap. You can then give these items away to community charities.
Cash donations. Charities appreciate donations in kind, but what they need the most is money to keep their work going. A few extra dollars or a token sum in a check goes a long way to help continue their cause and fund their projects.
Do Not Let Food Go to Waste
One of the best things you can do for the cause of ending world hunger is to not waste food. For every pot of leftovers you throw to the garbage, or for every big meal you don’t finish in a restaurant, millions of people in the world’s poorest countries have nothing to eat. Be thankful that you have everything in the world to solve hunger pangs, but be reminded that a lot of people in the world go through hunger, poverty and malnutrition and see no end in sight. Finish all the food on your plate, and eat only what you can consume in one sitting.
The lack of food is one of the most serious crises suffered by the world today. By donating food, you can help many people live through at least a day without growing hungry, getting sick, and dying from lack of food.