Food Pantries In The United States

Another form of food distribution for struggling Americans is food pantries. Food pantries operate by collecting and then distributing donated and purchased groceries directly to food insecure families. Food pantries have been around since the early 1960s and were originally developed with the intention of providing food to individuals in times of emergencies (Yao et al, 2013). People who use food pantries have limited resources to purchase food and as a result they rely on the availability and quality of donated food (Robaina & Martin, 2012). Food pantry participation is often associated with low-income women with low-education levels, single mothers with children living at home, and older women who live in rural areas who have difficulty
feeding their families or have even run out of money (Hruschka, 2012). One in seven Americans, which is about 46 million people, rely on food pantries to feed themselves and their families (Bhattarai, Duffy, & Raymond, 2015). Of these 46 million people, about 32 percent are children and nine percent are seniors (Bhattarai, Duffy, & Raymond, 2015). In total, there are 200 food banks, which are organizations that collect food to be distributed to food pantries, and roughly 63,000 food pantries in the United States (Blackstone & Herrmann, 2014). This network of food banks and food pantries distributes more than 2.5 billion pounds of food each year to people who suffer from food insecurity (Bhattarai, Duffy, & Raymond, 2015).