At the Brunswick Street Mission food bank in Halifax, they’ve done away with the pre-packaged food boxes, and instead let clients choose what they’d like.
The new Brunswick Street Market opened Monday and offers a new experience to those who need a helping hand.
“This is our food bank, but a food bank revamped,” said the organization’s executive director Derek Pace. “To provide the dignity of choice, so that people can come through and shop like they’re going to the grocery store.”
The non-profit organization has typically operated under the traditional food box model, but changed to this choice-based model following client feedback.
“To go home with a box of groceries, open it up and find out that there’s not a whole lot in there that you can eat, or that you’re going to enjoy — or that your kids are going to eat — would be very difficult. And we heard from clients that it was very difficult, so we wanted to give them the opportunity to shop,” said Pace, adding they try to keep stock in a variety of food items, including Halal meats and gluten-free options.
The new food bank opened at a pivotal time – demand has never been higher. In the first six months of 2021, Brunswick Street Mission served 170 households, representing 470 individuals. During that same period in 2022, the organization has served more than double that: 466 households, representing 1,088 people.
“There’s all kinds of factors that feed into that, but life is just getting more expensive and there seems to be a lot more month left over when the money runs out for people,” Pace said.
Only scratching the surface
While the amount of people accessing food banks is stark, one expert told Global News it’s only a snapshot of the problem.
“Most food insecure people don’t even go to food banks,” said Acadia University sociology professor Lesley Frank, who’s also the Canada Research Chair in Food Health and Social Justice.
“It’s usually around 20 per cent or maybe slightly more of the food insecure that ever avail themselves to food charity. So (food banks do) help the more severe food insecure … but it’s really missing the mark on who is actually food insecure.”
Frank said while improving choice in food banks would likely be appreciated by those who access them, she said it’s like “tinkering” with a system that’s already broken.
“These efforts to make food charity better, and then having governments supporting food charity now with government funding is a very downstream approach to the problem of food insecurity,” said Frank.
“We can do good work in trying to meet people’s immediate needs — and there’s many people in many community organizations that are committed to doing good work and improving access to foodbanks — but those things will never fix food insecurity. That’s the responsibility of governments to ensure we have adequate income security programs and the responsibility of employers to ensure we have adequate wages,” said Frank.
She said the right to food is not about charity at all, but about ensuring all people have the capacity to feed themselves with dignity.
She also said that despite best efforts to improve choice, it’s still “always limited by what others have already pre-selected as your choice.”
Choice model food bank benefits
According to recent research out of the University of Ottawa, there are some benefits to a choice-based model for food banks.
Over an 18-month period, researchers aimed to identify changes in food insecurity and associations with different types of food bank approaches.
“In our study, reductions in food insecurity were associated with food banks that offered a choice model and there was a slight improvement in perceived mental health at the end of the 18-month study,” said Anita Rizvi, a PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa. She and her supervisor, Dr. Elizabeth Kristjansson, found that the choice model may be especially beneficial for people who must avoid certain foods for medical reasons or for cultural or religious ones.
“The benefits of the choice model are lower levels of food insecurity, lower levels of waste, and conferring more dignity on the consumer,” said Rizvi, acknowledging while they offer some relief of food insecurity, they don’t eliminate the problem.
Pace understands that too, saying he is just happy to be able to help the growing number of people walking through the mission’s doors.
“It feels good to be able to offer choice and to offer some level of short-term food security to people who come through here,” he said.