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Comment by hospitalJail | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand what food banks are for.

Does Canada have something like Food Stamps/WIC?

Food is absurdly cheap, and not all food needs to be cooked/prepared.

They are places, commonly run by volunteers, where people with financial problems can get a food package at regular intervals, e.g. weekly. They sometimes rely on food donated by supermarkets with a 'best before' which has passed - which isn't a big deal for certain types of food such as rice and pasta.

>They sometimes rely on food donated by supermarkets with a 'best before' which has passed

Oh! That makes a bunch of sense. Good idea to have a food bank to get rid of aging food.

yep. I used to volunteer in one, we had a large warehouse and everything revolved around best before dates. We had quite a few people on our lists, often single mothers with kids. We'd make up packages for them each week. A big part of it (for me at least) was giving treats so the mothers would have something nice they could give for the poor kids :( not too much of course, majority by weight was staples like bread rice flour and pasta, and lots of vegetables. We'd also occasionally get very impractical donations (like one time we recieved almost a thousand banannas) and had to get creative cooking to preserve them to last longer. Lots of pickling, jams etc

I have never heard of a food bank in Ontario offering food with passed expiration dates. I previously volunteered there and most of the food was from grocery stores/corporate donors, but not expired.

Not in Ontario, but I helped sort canned goods for a charity a few times, and they were compelled by law to be much more strict with "best by" dates and dented cans than I would be at home. I assume that approach is pretty common across North America.

Actually in the US there is a law that protects charities from being sued for providing spoiled food. The Good Samaritain Food Donation Act.

That's not true. The law only applies to wholesale supply chain, not providing food to consumers.

https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/08/13/good-samaritan-ac...

The act also provides limited liability protection, both civil and criminal, for those who distribute food and groceries, such as food banks.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1791

The food bank I worked at had guidelines per item group. Different items had different levels of strictness, though any worker was free to throw away any item if they thought it was spoiled or too badly damaged. Dents were okay as long as it remained sealed.

My guess is the strictness of the rules is driven by availability of resources and the level of need being met by the organization.

Food does not have expiration dates. Food has "sell by" or "best by" dates.

Meat usually has "use by" (or "use or freeze by") which is an expiration date.

The exact situation depends on the province but nothing exactly like food stamps that I’m aware of. Most of the support is through direct payments.

It takes time to access any of those benefits though, and there are still some that despite access to those struggle for whatever reason.

Food banks are not an exclusively Canadian thing - a lot of people in the U.K. have ended up depending on them as well.

The average cost of rent for a bachelor/studio in Ontario's cheapest cities is about double the max allowance for all expenses on Ontario Works.

Food inflation and shrinkflation in Canada has gone ballistic.

It’s not uncommon for something to cost 2-3x what it did 4 years ago, but the official figures on inflation are cooked to make it appear lower.

Food banks are all over the USA.

There are plenty of people who have absurdly little money, and food is far from free. With children, shelter, a doctor bill and an inefficient vehicle to get to work, your minimum-wage little money can go to zero fast.

Food is not absurdly cheap in Canada, and has gone up an incredible amount in the last 2 years.

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