What's for dinner at the food bank, revisited

As the way people donate to the food bank has changed, so has what the food bank is delivering to clients.

As part of what was then known as the CBC Turkey Drive, in 2008 I visited the Upper Room Food Bank in Charlottetown. I was curious about what exactly went into a box for people who needed its services, and what I could put on the table from what was in that box. So I asked them to put one together for my family of four.

Interested in how that might have changed more than a decade later, I asked again last week. Staff took a box and unpacked it, listed its contents and sent along a few pictures, then packed it back up to be handed out to a food bank client.

There was a lot in common between the two boxes. In an astonishing coincidence, both contained a box of Honeycombs cereal. There were cans of tuna and poultry, canned soup, canned vegetables, crackers.

There were little oddities in both: packages of Dream Whip and Shake 'n Bake in 2008; a can of sweetened condensed milk and a jar of olives in 2022.

Boxes of macaroni and cheese featured in both, but there were five boxes in 2008 and just one box in 2022.

Food bank executive director Mike MacDonald is amused Honeycombs landed in both boxes.

"We actually usually don't get Honeycombs," he told me after I went through the crate. "It's usually Cheerios or Corn Flakes or something."

The food bank is also seeing fewer oddities in donations, he said, with people appearing to be more often buying things specifically to donate.

"At one point we were getting, I would say, a box of Shake 'n Bake with some of the Shake 'n Bake missing from it, so maybe somebody bought something, tried it, didn't like it, and donated the rest to us," said MacDonald. (Opened packages are a no-no, of course.)

Now they are more likely to see a big influx of cans of soup when one of the grocery chains has them on sale.

The food bank is also being more mindful about what goes into boxes. Some items — hot sauce, for example, or large bags of raisins (a recent donation) —  will be set out in the lobby for people to take if they're interested.

"[We're] just trying to make sure that that food really gets to someone that's going to use it," said MacDonald.

But the biggest difference comes in the supply of fresh food.