Mostly this myth is pushed by feedingamerica.org a group that, like any global warming "cause" solicits funding by getting people to believe a myth...
Disagree.
Hunger in America is real enough.
Feeding America (formerly Second Harvest National Food Bank Network, headquartered in Chicago) is a worthwhile organization.
The website for the national office can be found at...
U.S. Hunger Relief Charity Feeding America and their full list of regional food banks (large metro-scale food donating, warehousing and re-distribution centers) can be found at...
Find Your Local Food Bank Feeding America ... with member food banks (big warehouse) in cities such as...
Chicago...
Providing food for hungry people while striving to end hunger in our community - Greater Chicago Food Depository
New York...
City Harvest - Rescuing Food for New York s Hungry
Los Angeles...
Home
Dallas...
North Texas Food Bank NTFB.org - North Texas Food Bank - Feeding America
Raleigh...
Welcome - Food Bank of Central Eastern North Carolina
Portland...
Home Oregon Food Bank
And on and on and on... nearly 200 large-scale (regional) food banks, spread across the entire country, including Alaska and Hawaii.
Each of these Major Foodbanks is huge... many spanning an entire city-block or more...
Each of these, in turn, supply scores - mostly hundreds - of local-area neighborhood mini-foodbanks, church and other food pantries, missions, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, school lunch feeding programs, and local vocational teaching kitchens, urban farming and food gardening operations, and a host of other social services...
Including health inspectors and sanitation-compliance auditing staff who routinely visit and certify neighborhood feeding programs as in compliance with health standards, etc., as a supplement to local health departments, and in order to remain eligible to receive foodstuffs from the regional food bank...
Many such community-level feeding programs and food-supplement pantries, etc., draw some or all of their weekly food inventories through these large regional food banks...
A church food-pantry, for example, might be enrolled as a member of a regional food bank's Member Network, and, as such, is entitled to purchase X number of pounds of food each week from that food bank, for, say, 5-cents or 7-cents per pound.. a ridiculously-low rate, which helps a little, to offset the cost of operating the larger food bank.
Most food banks provide access to not only boxed or dry-goods -caliber food but also meats and dairy and produce products that they would not otherwise be able to afford.
If anyone you know has ever visited a local community food pantry during hard times, to supplement their meager food supply during a period of unemployment or if they do not qualify for food stamps or if their food stamp allotment in their state is ridiculously low or has been exhausted, chances are good, that the food at that neighborhood pantry came in-part from local store purchases and donations, and partly (even largely) from a weekly or semi-weekly supplies-run to the large-scale regional foodbank - a member of Feeding America.
These large regional food banks, in turn, take-in dozens or scores of semi tractor trailer -loads (and a great many delivery-van loads) of donated food, from local-area grocery stores, food distribution warehouses, and local and regional food processors and food manufacturers and food distributorships.
Usually, those donations involve food that is within a couple of weeks (sometimes even days) of their freshness or expiration or sell-by date, and, when such product is pulled from the shelves while still being viable, the choices are to (1) donate the product and obtain a tax deduction, or (2) send it off to the landfill, and write it off.
Decades ago, the first generation of Food Bankers convinced Corporate America (the food-producing element, anyway) that it made far more sense to donate that still-viable product than to dump it, and, over the years, Congress come to agree - providing Good Samaritan laws that eliminate the risk to them of donating such product.
Every truckload that comes in is inspected at the regional food bank, looking for breaks and fractures in packaging or spilled or tainted or contaminated or spoiled product, by teams of both staff and volunteers - separating the good from the bad - and the good stuff is put onto shelves and into gigantic walk-in refrigerators and freezers at the regional food bank, awaiting the next round of community-agency Shoppers to arrive, and to take that product back to their own local pantries, soup kitchens, and the like.
Companies like Kraft Foods, General Mills, and hundreds of other large-scale food companies donate millions upon millions of pounds through the national office in Chicago, which brokers the deals and arranges logistics to ship the donations to multiple member food banks within reasonable driving distance of the donating facility, and those same companies also donate directly to the regional food banks, on a similar and even larger scale - millions upon millions upon millions of pounds of donated food each year.
It's what keeps (probably, a majority percentage of) our neighborhood pantries and mini-food banks and missions and shelters and the like, stocked with enough food to help many of those in the most need, who are otherwise oftentimes forced to choose between paying the rent or electric bill, and having at least some nutritious food on the table.
And, in times of emergency - hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, etc. - where the American Red Cross, Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, etc. - set up shelters and feeding operations - they oftentimes coordinate with both the Feeding American national office and regional food bank(s) in order to obtain large-scale food inventories quickly and effectively.
Oh, it's a nonprofit, and it's not all Goody-Two-Shoes and Sunshine even within the operation of that niche charity marketplace, but it's one of the better examples of privately-initiated and privately funded and privately operated poverty-relief organizations still on its feet in the country, and it does far more good than harm, for the poorest amongst us.
For what it's worth...
...even though our colleague was online for a good 15-20 minutes after those challenges were issued. Tee-hee.
