Say Anything Blog

Eating healthy is one thing.  Throwing away food, even if its not the healthiest kind of food, that could be feeding hungry people is quite another.

one Miriam’s Kitchen official explained, “If anyone brings us donuts, Steve [the chef] throws them away. . . . It is not good food for our guests. We care too much to give them anything but the best. Steve wants our guests to have the same experience as if they were paying $30 for the meal.”

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There are a lot of things that are not good for the guests of Miriam’s Kitchen — beginning with being homeless, a situation often caused by drug addiction and mental illness. And while eating a donut would seem to be the least of these people’s troubles, it is certainly a worthy goal for food kitchens to endeavor to provide a healthy meal to those they serve. All the same, that dismissal of donuts betrays an expanding food snobbery that once was confined to food magazines and ladies who lunch, but now is showing up in the unlikeliest of places, like food banks and homeless shelters.

This attitude is not limited to the shelters in our nation’s capital. A recent meal served at the Meet Each Need with Dignity (MEND) kitchen in Pacoima, Calif., included pumpkin soup seasoned with browned butter and sage, red-wine barbecue beef on handmade puff pastry, artichoke hearts with meatballs marinara, roasted-garlic-and-turnip mashed potatoes, all topped off with fresh blueberries and sour cream. No wonder these places need a bailout.

What is most worrisome is the counterproductive message Miriam’s Kitchen is sending to those who donate food: it might get thrown away. No one objects to feeding homeless people healthy and tasty food, and no one wants to return to the Dickensian days of giving the poor gruel laced with bugs. But it is shocking to hear that charities are throwing away perfectly good food at a time when stimulus funds — that is, American taxpayers’ dollars — are being used to supplement their food stores.

Seems to me that given the number of people who need help, soup kitchens should be less worried about making their “guests” feel like they’ve eaten a $30 meal than making sure they feed as many people as possible.

All of this reminds me of this picture taken of Michelle Obama at the very soup kitchen described above.

A homeless guy who can afford a cell phone and cell phone plan taking a picture of the first lady on his way to a free “$30 dollar” meal courtesy of the taxpayers.

Hope and change!