Talking Turkey
Bigger is not always better.
The stockings are hung, the menorah’s mostly lit, and rumors of snow and ice terrorize local nightly news castors. Elfin magic mixes with planetary patterns, and a new season of growing sunshine has begun. It is the enchanting time of year that grocery stores humble brag about their charitable giving.
The brag usually involves a weight of food donated, “We gave x pounds of food to fight local hunger.”
The idea the store is trying to convey is that they took x pounds (where x is an impressive number greater than 0) of potential profit and donated it, for free, to feed all the people in the local community who were hungry, and who are now fed, thanks to the generosity of your local grocery store (associated with a multinational grocery brand).
I thought about these claims as I pulled a series of twenty-ish pound turkeys out of a freezer to distribute at my church’s food pantry. The turkeys came labeled with the grocer’s logo and tagged with their market value (between $37 and $46). They wanted to make sure the pantry volunteers and the turkey recipients knew exactly from where the birds came and exactly how generous of a gift was each bird.
The donation of absurdly large turkeys, while possibly well intentioned, means that the people who receive them will need to acquire seasoning, aluminum foil, and possibly a larger roasting pan. Additionally, they will need to expend an exceptional amount of energy, either gas or electricity, to cook the bird to completion. These are people who are receiving food aid; many of them are on fixed incomes and already live creatively within a strict utility budget, which is hard enough in winter. And while the bird will provide a lot of food, most of the clients at this particular pantry are elderly individuals or couples who aren’t going to eat an entire 20 pound turkey, which means much of the meat will either be tossed in a freezer or will go to waste (hopefully the freezer, but really, who is going to be excited about having 15 pounds of frozen turkey lingering in their ice box?). (Alternatively, the recipient could chop a practical amount of meat off the raw bird and throw the rest out.)
The grocery store gave a total donation of around 300 pounds of food, which looks great on a sign or in an ad, but the gift is completely impractical. The same grocery store could have given 50 pounds of boneless turkey breasts and they would have fed the same amount of people with less waste and less of a financial burden on the recipients.
Grocery stores aren’t the only entities to give excess charity without considering the needs of those who are supposed to receive it (I’ve loaded massive full racks of USDA donated pork ribs into the waiting cart of a donation recipient). The issues behind the impracticality of these gifts are deeply embedded in our cultural value system, the agricultural industry, and the structures that govern and define charitable giving in our country. I’m coming at this, today, from a position way down the line from any potential solution. But I need to start somewhere, and saying what I see seems like a place to start.
In wordy good cheer,
Walter