Although many food banks discourage donations of junk food, they still don’t get enough donations of healthy food and continue to receive unwanted items, said the consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest on Monday. Only a fraction of federal and state laws and regulations prioritize nutritious food donations, it said, in a report that called for more attention to nutrition.
“People who rely on the charitable food system both want and deserve nutritious food and beverages that support their health,” said the CSPI. Its report, “Policy approaches for healthier food banking,” made 18 recommendations for improvement, beginning with the adoption of nutrition standards for the food that USDA purchases and donates to charity.
“Setting such standards may also accelerate improvements faster than USDA’s slower and less formal approach of trying to align its purchases with the [Dietary Guidelines for Americans] over a period of years,” said the report. Second on the list of recommendations was “Congress should increase TEFAP funding.” TEFAP is the abbreviation for The Emergency Food Assistance Program, the largest of the government’s food donation programs with $1.8 billion in funding in 2019.
The report also said states should play a larger role in subsidizing farm-to-food bank donations.
Government agencies provide roughly 23 percent of food bank inventory. Sixty percent of the material comes from supermarkets, food distributors, manufacturers, growers and restaurants. Food banks buy the remaining 17 percent themselves. A 2018 report found that a quarter of food bank distributions were unhealthy .
The CSPI report is available here.