Food banks: a lifeline for those in need
At Christmas, food is more important than ever for those in need. Eleanor Walters explains how we can donate to food banks.
A huge turkey glinting with fat, circled with all the trimmings: crispy roast potatoes, golden parsnips, steaming vegetables, stuffing, pigs in blankets, Yorkshire puddings… and that’s before we even get to dessert!
Does your Christmas dinner sound similar? Lots and lots of food and no worries at all? Well, what about when it isn’t like that, when money is the biggest worry, and you don’t know if you’ll have food for the next day? Where do you go then? Food banks, that’s where - the baskets that you see in supermarkets, and that you might occasionally put a tin of beans in when you remember. Some people rely on those things to get them through their week.
When you put food into those baskets, they are taken away to a food bank centre, where they are sorted by thousands of volunteers into food parcels, packages containing plenty of food that can be given to people in crisis.
A typical food parcel from the Trussell Trust includes:
· Cereal
· Soup
· Pasta
· Rice
· Tinned tomatoes/pasta sauce
· Lentils, beans and pulses
· Tinned meat
· Tinned vegetables
· Tea/coffee
· Tinned fruit
· Biscuits
· UHT milk
· Fruit juice
It will also include essential toiletries and hygiene products too.
From 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021, the Trussell Trust delivered 2.5 million food parcels to those in need. That’s amazing! It was a 33% increase from the previous year, which is a depressing reflection on how the Covid pandemic has made people's lives significantly harder in the past 18 months. These food parcels have such a huge impact on people’s lives and can help to keep them from starving.
There are many stories on the Trussell Trust website on how food banks and food parcels can be someone’s saviour, and how they help them get through tough times so that they can focus on other things to help them get to a better place in life.
So, next time you go shopping, either on your own or with your parents, how about you pick up some tinned soup or a can of peaches to put in the food bank, to help people get through this Christmas?
Eleanor Walters, Y7
A huge turkey glinting with fat, circled with all the trimmings: crispy roast potatoes, golden parsnips, steaming vegetables, stuffing, pigs in blankets, Yorkshire puddings… and that’s before we even get to dessert!
Does your Christmas dinner sound similar? Lots and lots of food and no worries at all? Well, what about when it isn’t like that, when money is the biggest worry, and you don’t know if you’ll have food for the next day? Where do you go then? Food banks, that’s where - the baskets that you see in supermarkets, and that you might occasionally put a tin of beans in when you remember. Some people rely on those things to get them through their week.
When you put food into those baskets, they are taken away to a food bank centre, where they are sorted by thousands of volunteers into food parcels, packages containing plenty of food that can be given to people in crisis.
A typical food parcel from the Trussell Trust includes:
· Cereal
· Soup
· Pasta
· Rice
· Tinned tomatoes/pasta sauce
· Lentils, beans and pulses
· Tinned meat
· Tinned vegetables
· Tea/coffee
· Tinned fruit
· Biscuits
· UHT milk
· Fruit juice
It will also include essential toiletries and hygiene products too.
From 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021, the Trussell Trust delivered 2.5 million food parcels to those in need. That’s amazing! It was a 33% increase from the previous year, which is a depressing reflection on how the Covid pandemic has made people's lives significantly harder in the past 18 months. These food parcels have such a huge impact on people’s lives and can help to keep them from starving.
There are many stories on the Trussell Trust website on how food banks and food parcels can be someone’s saviour, and how they help them get through tough times so that they can focus on other things to help them get to a better place in life.
So, next time you go shopping, either on your own or with your parents, how about you pick up some tinned soup or a can of peaches to put in the food bank, to help people get through this Christmas?
Eleanor Walters, Y7
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