By SLCgreen Intern Kellen Hunnicutt
There is a difference between what is safe to eat and what can be sold at a grocery store. Best-by and sell-by dates are not designed to be safety dates; rather they’re reference points indicating when foods may have the best flavor or quality. Similarly, bruised or oddly shaped foods may be rejected by grocery stores, even though they’re still nutritious and safe to eat.
Food Not Bombs is a global organization committed to food recovery, equity and mutual aid. The Salt Lake City chapter has been operating continuously since 1999. The group has built relationships with local food providers such as Natural Grocers, Good Earth Markets, and City Cakes Bakery. Each week, volunteers pick up food from these locations that is edible but unsellable to redistribute to the community.
Regular Food Distribution
Food Not Bombs meets at Richmond Park every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 11:00AM. Volunteers set out food items in boxes, and attendees form a line. Community members get one food item from each box. Individuals can get in line again to pick up more food if they want. This continues until everyone has what they need or the group runs out of supplies.
Addressing Food Waste & Food Insecurity
In the United States, 34 million people face food insecurity while a staggering 119 billion pounds of food is wasted annually. In Utah, over 350,000 people are food insecure.
Food waste also has significant environmental repercussions. When we throw away food, all the energy and resources that went into producing, packaging, and transporting it are also wasted. If this food ends up in a landfill, it emits methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide, as it rots.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, food waste in the United States produces as many greenhouse gas emissions as 32.6 million cars.
Food Not Bombs helps to solve both food waste & hunger by simultaneously reducing how much food is thrown out and feeding people who have not received equitable access to food.
Food Equity Microgrant Awardee
This year, 13 community groups received funding from the Salt Lake City Food Equity Microgrant Program. The City’s Sustainability Department created this program to support community projects to that are increasing people’s access to fresh, healthy and culturally relevant foods. Food Not Bombs received $1,000 from the Food Equity Microgrant to continue and expand their efforts to decrease food insecurity in SLC.
“Our organization serves any and all members of the public, but primarily aims to help those that are living in poverty in this city, or in some way experience limited access to food,” Food Not Bombs members wrote in their microgrant application. “There is no threshold of status that we demand our beneficiaries to hold, such as citizenship, identification-holding, or proof of income. Therefore, we open our access to immigrants, the unsheltered, or informally sheltered, and no documentation is necessary. By not requiring these thresholds, we remove barriers that are traditionally placed between people and the food they can access.”
Photo credit goes to Kristin Murphy.