The four of us spent Sunday morning at a local food bank, sorting through food drive collections and packing boxes of variety goods for needy families. It was a learning experience, in many ways.
First of all, it’s worth learning what makes up 25 pounds of food in a packing box (12 x 12 x 24 or something like that: not as big as a file box). You learn what items you can use to “make weight” and what items you can add to tip the scale without overfilling the box. And you are always looking for some kind of nutritional balance.
Second, but perhaps more important, you learn what’s worth donating when you see a food donation box. A short list, based on yesterday’s exercise, would include peanut butter, tuna, canned soups and meals (Chef-boy-ardee, anyone?), mac and cheese, canned fruits, crackers, and pasta noodles. These are all pretty solid nutritionally and last a long time. What not to include? Ramen noodles: we had 7 cases of them in the first Gaylord we unpacked. Very little of it went to the intended recipients. It has a nutritional value near zero, and we threw away most of them, some of it in the cases it was shipped in. What a waste. (As it turns out, their suggested donations pretty closely mirror my list.)
Cereals are also good choices. For some reason, those were broken out into separate processes, as were bulk/institutional packages.
It looks like we’ll be doing this regularly: my young Girl Scout was the first to do it and she and her mom liked the experience to make it a family trip. For a dozen people to spend three hours and help feed 220 people is pretty good leverage.