Let 'Em Eat Cake

Apparently drug addicts and the indigent do not merit nutrition counseling. At least that is what I must conclude after a recent experience. I had answered an ad seeking volunteers at the food bank/soup kitchen in a nearby town. A woman called me immediately and admitted during my interview the next day that only one other person had responded.

The job description included cooking a hot lunch daily, serving that meal to about 120 people, delivering bagged foods to homebound individuals and staffing the food bank. I could choose to do any or all of those tasks on as many or as few days as I wished. I said I would fulfill whatever job was needed most.

During the course of being interviewed by a 24-year-old Vista volunteer, I explained that I had worked at another local food bank for almost two years and was dismayed at the amount of unhealthy foods foisted upon people who were already in obviously poor health. She asked for an example and I cited the dozens of unsold and stale sheet cakes, donuts, cookies, muffins, and eclairs dropped off each evening from the local supermarkets. I recounted several times when I had talked a client of the food bank out of those choices and convinced them to opt for something more nutritious. That seemed like a victory to me.

Today I received an email from the Volunteer Coordinator stating that, "While we here at MCHPP focus on distributing nutritious food, we also honor clients' decisions and allow them to take not-so-healthy food if it's available. Treating people we serve in a manner that recognizes their dignity includes withholding judgment of what a client should or should not have to eat, and allowing them to make decisions on their own."  Thus, I was deemed "not a good fit" to serve food to their clientele of homeless drug addicts for no pay.