The COVID-19 pandemic has brought notice to several food bank spots throughout Salt Lake County, including schools, recreation centers, and traditional food bank distribution sites. Sadly, for some reason, handing out rancid, rotten and inedible food has also become a norm.
My mother has volunteered for a food bank site for several years, and when I’ve helped her, I’m shocked that stores are trying to pass their moldy bread, ready-made food and rotten items to those in need. Residents cleaning out storage rooms of home-canned jars labeled “summer ’78” and donating them to food sites is a norm. Further, stores get a donation write-off when giving food that really should be tossed and written off, not handed to the hungry to scrape the mold off and eat in a corner like an animal.
Please, give those in need the dignity and humanity of food and items they can actually eat and use to make life easier. The best rule of thumb is: If you wouldn’t eat food with mold on it, neither should anyone else. If you don’t want to eat your canned beans from the summer of ’78, it’s better for someone else not to, either.
Imagine someone in need collecting items from a food bank, going home and preparing dinner just to realize the bread they were counting on is covered with mold and the macaroni someone has been saving since 1985 is full of bugs.
Threadbare clothing, broken toys and near garbage is simply that: garbage. Don’t try to relieve your personal landfill guilt by “donating” trash to those in need.
Asking those struggling for food or clothing to sort through donated trash and rotten moldy food strips those in need of dignity. Throw out your garbage and only donate quality, fresh items and treat people the way you would want to be treated in the same situation.
Andrea Andersen, Midvale