As the falcon wing doors of the Tesla Model X opened, the bottom of the cardboard box I held gave way. Cans clattered, grapefruits rolled, and a waterlogged box of powdered mashed potatoes hit the pavement with a splat. We wedged what was left of the pulpy boxes into the car and gave it a little pat as it sped off to make deliveries. The rain had soaked my cloth mask and I wished for gills. It was my fifth week working as a packer in Atlanta’s COVID-19 Emergency Grocery Delivery depots.
When my Yale Farm Summer Internship went remote, I had already journeyed south to be with my family. Funding from the internship had enabled me to volunteer, so I began working at four grocery depots in Atlanta, Georgia: CJ, SWEEAC, ICM, and FH. These depots arose as part of emergency responses to rising food insecurity during the pandemic due to lay-offs, illness, and economic hardship. The depots were also intended to help elderly and immunocompromised people avoid visiting hubs for infection: grocery stores and self-choice food pantries. As I packed the groceries, I wondered how these particular items were chosen. Were they what clients needed? Did the highly variable supply add up to the same nutrients?
By the time I began volunteering, these pantries had already undergone vast transformations in their models. Before, clients could shop amongst the supply and choose items they knew they needed, accounting for their tastes, diet-related illnesses and dietary restrictions. Emergency grocery delivery, on the other hand, uses a pre-packed model that is convenient, based on family size, and the parcels are uniform. Due to the transmissibility of COVID-19, this has become the most common, most efficient, and safest way to carry out emergency grocery distribution. They needed more hands to meet management needs and we volunteers had newfound free-time to pitch in.
To understand how these delivery services were addressing the nutritional needs of clients in Atlanta, I catalogued the contents of bags at four depots, basing the percentages on a 2,000 calorie diet and calculating the percentages per person and per day. 2,000 is an arbitrary number of calories. It is based on the FDA’s penchant for nice round numbers. Recommended calories are based on the weight and activity level of an individual. I averaged the number of people in a served household and used the 2,000 calorie diet because it was standard.
I found that, although CJ, ICM, and SWEEAC served similar populations, they varied immensely in the content of their packages. The presence of more or less of a food group was based upon that week’s availability of the group, not designated for a specific need or request.
In a review of food pantries in high income countries from 1980-2015, food bags were low in vitamins A, C, and calcium and adequate in macronutrients. In the pantries I studied, the micronutrient levels varied from site to site with SWEEAC as the most consistently high-nutrient bags.
Although SWEEAC appeared to provide consistently high nutritional values, I had concerns about food borne illness while distributing their boxes. Many pantries and food banks use a similar criteria for admitting or refusing food: “would I eat it?” I abide by the five-second-rule. That’s not a great standard to approve food for the most vulnerable, immuno-compromised, elderly, and food insecure populations in Atlanta. This criteria is not uniform and it was difficult to imagine myself eating the types of foods we were packing to begin with due to the large quantities of the staple items we doled out.
The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act of 1996 limits the liability of food donors under the pretense of food waste concerns (30 to 40 percent of food in the USA is wasted) and the suggestion that, if 5% of food waste was recovered, 4 million Americans could be fed. Because food borne illness is common and rampant (48 million cases annually), donors must be protected from liability except in cases of gross negligence in order to incentivize donation and rescue of waste. Georgia, like most states, does not have state legislation or regulations about food safety for donations beyond absolution of liability for food donors.
The meat handling processes made me more uncomfortable than anything else I experienced. I don’t eat meat and was repulsed by the fluids leaking from the styrofoam. At one pantry, the dripping packages were bagged together with twice-baked potatoes and other non-meat foods. The meats were often close to expiration (which is common in food donations because recently expired food is still safe to eat, just not able to be sold). These shrink-wrapped bags of frozen meat would sit sweating in the Georgia sun for an hour before they were packed into cars to their destinations where they might sit on a porch or door step for a while longer. Once, we opened the freezer to find that the 5lb bricks of ground turkey had defrosted to a sickening tenderness to the touch. They went out with all the other food. Raw meat was a part of the emergency relief because clients demanded it. Would I eat it? No. But enforcing dietary restrictions on other people can be patronizing and culturally insensitive.
“It is difficult for pantries and banks to refuse donations. The Atlanta Food Bank rarely turns away donations. Their intent is to bring people to the table and thus, their food acceptance policy is welcoming even to food they know they can’t use.”
A pre-packed parcel of food is inherently curated to the assumption of what people eat: a mix of food groups and a diversity of items. Going further to create a vegetarian or low sugar parcel can mean throwing away supplies or refusing donations without regard to client desires. Given the pandemic precautions, people are unable to choose their own food. For people living more than a one mile radius from a grocery store, there is a heightened risk of heart failure. Should they be denied red meat, a known cardiovascular hazard? It is difficult for pantries and banks to refuse donations. The Atlanta Food Bank rarely turns away donations. Their intent is to bring people to the table and thus, their food acceptance policy is welcoming even to food they know they can’t use. They either find a way to move this food or try to dispose of it in an environmentally conscious way. The reason for this welcoming policy is to allow them to communicate with the distributor to see if a better option can be reached with healthier food. As a result, some of the food they have to move is sugary, highly processed, or otherwise unhealthy.
These policies contribute to the randomness of the COVID-19 emergency grocery response. What I mean by randomness here, is the the lack of a system and the subsequent nonuniformity of the product. Based on their depot assignment, clients can receive anywhere from 22 to 83 percent of a 2,000 calorie diet. The quantity is not based on the severity of the need. Calories alone are not enough to remedy acute hunger. Randomness invites food waste, culturally and medically inappropriate foods, and increased lack of control for individuals over their food choices. The speed at which the depots emerged and the rate that hunger continues to grow has created a network with with variable offerings and an unclear strategy beyond calorie fulfillment.
“Excess and redundancy are signs that this response to COVID-19 related hunger should be more systematic.”
I often wondered, while packing, how families were using the jumbo cans of tomatoes and five pound bags of grits each week. One of my tasks included calling clients to take them off the list for delivery. One client told me she wished she had been taken off the list earlier because the dry goods were just piling up in her cupboard. Depots are limited in funding and volunteer staffing. Keeping up, week to week, with the rate at which client circumstances are changing has become difficult. Excess and redundancy are signs that this response to COVID-19 related hunger should be more systematic.
Georgia has reopened against the wishes of Atlanta’s mayor. As the governor sues the mayor for her attempt to restrict reopening, COVID-19 cases have steadily increased. The moratorium on evictions is about to expire and back rent is piling up. Food insecurity will continue to grow throughout the state. The sustained chaos of the pandemic has begun to feel routine. Some pantries have been forced to move locations as the spaces they used revert to kids camps and churches. Prior to the pandemic The Atlanta Community Food Bank had a multi-year expansion plan for growth but the massive numbers they are seeing now have accelerated their timeline. The anti-hunger groups’ state of emergency has endured for longer than expected and their efforts show no sign of slowing. Emergencies call for rushes of adrenaline and short bursts of speed and precision. Calling the response an “emergency” has begun to lose meaning. The end is not in sight for this emergency and these hunger relief groups have accepted that COVID-19 emergency grocery delivery is the new normal.