Donations Gone Wrong A Hassle For Food Banks

Whether for a holiday or just because, food drives help food banks feed hungry people.

“We provide emergency food to families,” Michael Mcphee of the Manna Food Bank said.

Food pours in.

“We’ll stack it and categorize it: carrots, soups, vegetables,” he said.

Quantity isn’t the problem, though. The number of out-of-date canned foods donated may surprise you.

“With a large donation, it’s more prevalent than with a small. With a larger, I’d say maybe 25 percent,” he added.

Food banks check expiration dates carefully.

“If not, we’ll hunt for it. We’ll hunt for the dates. We don’t fool around with it. We don’t say, ‘We can’t see the date. Oh well, we’re going to use it.’ We don’t do that,” he said.

“If we cannot locate it, we will not use it,” Manna Food Bank outreach director Veda Brooks said.

Receiving so many unusable cans leaves food banks with a lot of work.

“It does become an issue when our volunteer source is low. Because the quality of food we’re giving out becomes more difficult because you need people to read labels,” Brooks said.

That’s hard for some eyes.

“They can’t even read the small print. You have to look around for it. It’s pretty hard,” one shopper said.

Others said donating a bad can isn’t an option.

“Once the date is done, you throw it away,” a shopper added.

“It’s people just getting rid of garbage. They think it’s ok, but it’s wrong,” another shopper said.

Regardless of the reason, food banks know even the bad food comes from a good place.

“They have a 3-foot-deep pantry, and they have a can of spaghetti sauce that they haven’t seen in three years. They’re not going to throw it in the trash can. They’re going to do a humanitarian thing and give it to us,” McPhee said. “The heart of the community is to give food, and they want to give it to the food bank, but they don’t check dates.”

If they do, they may not know what they’re looking for. Some cans have a lot of numbers on them.

There’s a big difference between the ‘best used by’ date and the ‘best sold by’ date. Stores look at the ‘best sold by’ date for their reputation and benefit, but consumers want to look at the ‘best use by’ date because can actually use canned goods aout six to eight months after stores shoulnd’t sell them anymore.

Lack of label checking leaves nothing left to the imagination. They’ve seen it all. The oldest donation?

“It was as old as old as I am, and I was Moses’ travel agent,” McPhee said.

“The people who come to us are trusting us to give them good food, so if we accidentally give them bad food, then they’re opening bad food and possibly feeding it to their children,” Brooks said.

Contrary to what many think, “Cans don’t really last forever. People think if it’s a canned good, they can keep it in case of the earthquake and they store it in their garage,” Brooks said.

So make sure you inspect the olives, check the cherries, and scour the soup, because your donation may belong in the garbage.