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The other side of this is that dollars donated to feed the hungry go farther than they would if there weren't places like WalMart, Sams, etc.
I don't like giving my money to those places, but dollars/pound you get better deals there than at any other place.
If I were in charge of buying food for a charity and had to actually spend money to do it (rather than rely on donations) I'd go to Sams. It'd be difficult to justify any other choice if the goal was to buy the most food at the lowest price.
I worked in a food bank for awhile. We would sometimes get expired/rotted food and would have to toss it. We periodically had to go through the warehouse tossing out stuff that had rotted in the can or jar. But generally I think people donated stuff right after they bought it.
I've heard of places where that doesn't happen, though. Some people apparently use charity food drives as a way to clean out that rotten stuff in the back of the cupboard. Yuck!
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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Seems to me that using a charity drive to rotate out the cans in the emergency food stash is a pretty good idea, though, especially if you do it every year with cans that have at least half their shelf life left.
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Dag, absolutely! If the cans/jars are not already showing signs of botulism toxin ("puffy" cans or jars on which the top has everted), then it's probably still good even after the "Best if used by" date.
But certainly if the stuff is in good condition and NOT past it's expiration, the food banks will take it and distribute it pretty quickly. They don't mind a bit if it's been sitting on your shelf for a dog year or two.
Opened packages are sometimes problematic. I mean, you buy the wrong kind of hot chocolate mix, use one pouch, hate it and donate the other 3 pouches... Some places will take and use that. Others will not. It all depends.
It's usually a good idea to ask first because there's nothing more frustrating, I think, than having to go through donated stuff throwing out the things that can't be accepted by that particular charity. You don't WANT to curse the donors for being blockheads, but it gets difficult sometimes to maintain perspective as the pile of usable stuff seems so much smaller than the pile of stuff you have to haul out to the dumpster.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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Oooh. You mean people give away puffy cans? Yuck!
I always assumed the food banks need something packaged for resale in an unopened condition. So a carton with individual items with full nutrition info on each would be good, but otherwise no.
quote: I thought the point of a pickle is that it never goes bad...
The point of a pickle is that is is preserved better than an uncured cucumber. Canned food isn't supposed to go "bad" either. Actually, I've never encountered a can that was puffy.
Also, beef jerky isn't supposed to go bad, but these days it comes heat sealed with "ageless oxygen absorber" in the package. Why? Because old fashioned beef jerky is dry and tough, while newer beef jerky has a higher fat content, so it's chewy, but the fat goes rancid. A lot of things are that way. Old fashioned pickles may have stayed good longer, but as they started adding sugar and MSG and so forth to improve the flavor, the shelf life got shorter. (Checking a jar of pickles) Hmm. Refrigerate after opening.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote: The other side of this is that dollars donated to feed the hungry go farther than they would if there weren't places like WalMart, Sams, etc.
Yeah, but considering how many businesses Walmart has put out of business, it seems to me that if there were no Walmart, there would be less need to feed the hungry.
I don't go to Walmart, period.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote: I knew there had to be something I agreed with Glenn on.
You know, I'm really bad at keeping track of personalities online. For all I know I've had a knock-down-drag out argument here with Rivka, and I don't even remember it. (I probably remember the argument, just not Rivka)
Seems like there ought to be a scorecard. Like, who's conservative, who's liberal, who's Mormon (on Hatrack, anyway), other religions, atheist, and other distinguishing characteristics. Like one of those personality tests in Cosmopolitan.
Then we could all know who we agree with, and who we don't.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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When I was working at a grocery store, we had to throw out all of the salad bar stuff every Sunday so the whole refrigerator/container things could be cleaned. It was probably close to 50 pounds of food that I had to throw out. It was state law, and it sickened me. I've done few things as uncomfortable as throwing out that much good food.
Happlily, one night a member of the local house of representitives came in and saw me doing it. I told him the law, and he seemed like he wanted to do something about it. I havn't kept track of it, to be honest.
Is anyone else kinda creeped out by Wal Mart? I can't stay in there for more than 20 minutes or so, just because it's so... dreary.
Posts: 903 | Registered: May 2003
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By virtue of what? Is it that their watches don't keep time (because my WalMart watch doesn't) or is it due to a relatavistic time dialation, or possibly becuase their time is 25% cheaper and manufactured in the third world?
Posts: 903 | Registered: May 2003
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Smarter minds than mine have puzzled over this phenomenon. It appears that just before he died, Sam Walton purchased at bulk prices the entire fabric of space-time and they've been using it to make clothing and soft-goods ever since. Unfortunately, this was, as you might suspect, some very cheaply made space-time fabric and it has started to fray at the edges and even run in places.
People caught near this deteriorating stuff naturally start to gravitate into the event horizon and only through sheer force of will does anyone ever make it out of a Walmart alive these days.
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*grin* Hi, Glenn. I don't believe we're ever had a knock-down fight, actually. I just noticed the past couple days that I disagreed with a number of your posts -- usually after other posters had expressed their disagreement far more eloquently that I would have. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Hi, Glenn. I don't believe we're ever had a knock-down fight, actually. I just noticed the past couple days that I disagreed with a number of your posts -- usually after other posters had expressed their disagreement far more eloquently that I would have. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
