Sweets

Today I’d like to talk about how much sugar is in food banks. Not just in baked goods, but in things like ketchup, salad dressing and canned fruits.

First and foremost, I am a label reader. I look at everything about a product before I eat it or serve it to others. I try not to have as much added sugar in my diet as much as possible. So one day when I was reading a label of ketchup, I was blow away that it had corn syrup in it. I understand that corn is cheap, therefore a great thing to put into low cost products to cut the cost even more. But seriously? I don’t want corn in my tomato products. Canned fruit is another thing. Shouldn’t they naturally sweet? What are you trying to cover up? To put it bluntly and in a brutally honest way, ew.

On to the processed sugary deserts that come into the food bank.

We get donations from the super markets around town as well as a major coffee house that was started in Seattle and keeps popping up on every other block (guess which cooperation I mean by that.. ;) ) And I love the fact that my small little town is willing to donate stuff to the bank. But seriously? We get about 500lbs of sweets a week. This includes, but not limited to: cakes, cookies, brownies, cupcakes, pies and donuts. Depending on how much of it we have, people who come into the bank can have 1-3 things. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met anyone that NEEDS 3 cakes. Just sayin’. Don’t get me wrong, I love a sweet treat here and there and it wouldn’t be a birthday with out a cake. But I don’t think that we need this much sugar!

So what can we do about it? This is the part where you help me out, because I’m at a loss. I don’t want to limit the amount of things that are donated to the food bank, but I feel like all we get is bakery goods! Yesterday I set out a good couple hundred pounds of sugar. I feel like I’m just contributing to the diabetes and obesity in the area.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO A TANGENT!

If you tell me you are diabetic and want diabetic friendly foods, why the heck are you grabbing a cake, too!!? That just doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t want to waste my hard work on getting you healthy foods when you’re just going to shoot up with insulin and eat a cake anyways. That makes me feel like my job is worthless and you want to suffer in your disease. I know that is pretty rude, but that’s my opinion as a frustrated public health professional.

Any comments, concerns, questions? Anything? If I don’t start getting feedback, I’m just going to get more and more radical. Just a warning.