4 signs that food pantries improve the diets of low-income people

Editor’s note: This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license and supplemented with local reporting. Read the original article.

The nation has thousands of food pantries, places that give cash-strapped people free food with few questions asked. These organizations can occupy everything from an entire building to a literal pantry — as in a few shelves in a church basement.

Most of the estimated 300 million Americans who relied on food pantries in 2017 experienced food insecurity, meaning that they didn’t have access to enough food. Even before the pandemic hit, up to half of the people who use food pantries live in food insecurity that is so severe that they sometimes skip meals or don’t eat for whole days at a time.

Food insecurity is, by many accounts, an even bigger problem now.

As of November, the OUR Center, a nonprofit organization providing critical services to families in Longmont, has been distributing around 95,000 pounds of food to local families per month, said Executive Director Marc Cowell. 

“We are up 20,000 points of food from last year,” he said. “Last month we saw about 1,600 households come through, which equates to about 5,100 individuals benefiting from the pantry and the assistance we provide through our food insecurity services.”

Community Food Share, a food bank serving Boulder and Broomfield counties, also has seen an increase in need throughout the communities that it serves, said Julia McGee, director of communications. 

“More than 40,000 people in Boulder and Broomfield counties relied on our network even before COVID-19 hit. This number has grown over the last nine months,” she said. “Families receive more than 100 pounds of food when they visit our onsite drive-through food pantry.”

Food pantries get the food they give away from many sources, sometimes making it hard to control nutritional quality as they seek to obtain the right quantity of food. And getting enough healthy food to give away is challenging.

I am a nutrition science researcher who studies what food-insecure Americans eat. My team and I have recently completed several studies on rural food pantries in Midwestern counties. We found four signs that food pantries improve the diets of low-income people.

1. A substantial amount of food

Food pantries are an important source of food.

People typically receive a bag or box containing enough food to serve their family three meals for about three or four days. Most people who use food pantries visit multiple pantries. About half make more than five trips a month to pick up food.

What’s in those boxes and bags accounts for an estimated 36% of what the people who pick them up eat, according to our recent article in the British Journal of Nutrition.

2. A good source of nutrients

Having access to enough food is critical, but the variety, nutrients and quality also are important for long-term health. We asked 613 U.S. Midwestern food pantry clients about the amounts and kinds of food they ate and where that food came from. We found that compared to supermarkets, other stores and restaurants, food pantries provided the most fruit, something most people in the U.S. at all income levels need to eat more of every day.

Likewise, Americans generally get too little fiber, calcium, vitamin D and potassium, making these nutritional deficits a public health concern — even for people not facing economic hardship. We found that the amounts of these nutrients in the items from food pantries were also highest or tied for the highest compared with all other food sources in the diets of people who visit food pantries.

Even so, Americans who use food pantries don’t get enough of these nutrients. Another concern is that provisions from food pantries tend to contain too much sodium, something most Americans need to curb.

Community Food Share’s McGee said there is a common misconception that food banks only provide cans and boxes of food, but that’s far from the truth.

“Of the 11.2 million pounds of food that Community Food Share distributed last year, 76% was fresh produce, dairy or high-protein foods. We even source some of our produce from Colorado farms and local community gardens,” she said, adding it also provides options conducive to food allergies and cultural dietary requirements, such as gluten-free or Kosher items.

Cowell said the pantry at the OUR Center is not designed to meet 100% of any family’s nutritional needs but the organization works hard to provide well-balanced food options.

“Our market floor was designed by nutritionists and a nutritionist oversees our community market,” he said. “We do our best to load up boxes and bags with the four main food groups and stay away from other areas that contribute to health issues such as sugars and carbs, etc.”

3. More visits = better nutrition

Making more trips to food pantries often means better nutrition.

Going more than once a month, rather than once a month or less, is linked with a higher-quality diet, or doing a better job of meeting the recommendations in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the science-based dietary guidance that the federal government maintains to promote health.

For example, the average American would get a failing grade, with a score of 59% for their consumption of fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy and protein, along with sodium, added sugar and saturated fat. People who rely on food pantries fare even worse.

Those using food pantries once a month or less would score 39%, while those visiting more frequently would score 44%. Higher dietary quality, even just a 5 percentage point gain, may improve someone’s health and help stave off chronic diseases.

Any household is allowed to come once a week to get food items from the OUR Center pantry, Cowell said, although some families choose to one come once or twice a month or only over the summer or during the holidays. 

“The frequency of access varies,” he said. “We try to give what we believe will assist an individual or a family for an entire week, the bigger the household the more food.”

4. A wider variety of food, including whole fruits

Eating a wide variety of food helps meet basic nutritional needs. The day after visiting a food pantry, people ate two more kinds of food compared with what they ate the day before.

Specifically, people who visited a food pantry ate more fruit, including whole fruits — such as eating an apple as opposed to drinking a glass of apple juice. Eating more whole fruits is especially helpful because they have a lot of fiber and other nutrients that can help prevent cancer, heart disease and other chronic diseases.

The food services team at the OUR Center does a good job of providing nutrition options, Cowell said, including whole and 2% milk, proteins and fresh produce. “We try best to stay away from sweets and carbs as much as possible.”

The Longmont community plays a big role in ensuring the food that is available includes high-quality items, according to Cowell. 

“We see a lot of high quality and wide variety of items from food drives and local grocers. They really get it. They really understand,” he said. “People (in Longmont) are very cognizant of what they are donating, which helps us tremendously in trying to provide nutritious food for the families that we serve.”

Heather Eicher-Miller, Associate Professor of Nutrition Science, Purdue University