Abundance

I like to think I’m a grocery store Jedi – able to get in and out with a maximum amount of nutritious, tasty food for a minimum bill, all while talking myself out of the expensive junk food I so desire. (These are not the Pop Tarts you are looking for …)

During this week’s grocery trip, though, I decided to look for something at the store I hadn’t before: empty shelves.

You can probably guess that I didn’t find any. No sold-out items, or even waning ones. My cheese was one of scores of blocks. My milk was surrounded by dozens of identical gallons. Even the less common items – this week it was maaagical Odwalla bars, to fill my need as a nursing mother for massive amounts of food all day long – were sold in boxes and stacks and piles.

The store had an abundance of everything.

Here is what got me thinking about this:

Yayyyy fuzzy cell phone picture!

Yup, that’s a table full of bread. It’s in the lobby of my church, which runs a food pantry. Last week, that table was one of four holding breads, rolls, cookies, pastries, and cakes that we ran out of room for on the four big shelves in the food pantry itself.

Every week, a few local stores give the pantry the food they can’t sell – mostly day-old bread and baked goods, but also meat nearing its expiration date (it lasts longer once frozen), produce that’s not pretty enough for the shelves any more, and any damaged but still safe items.

The new Walmart in town was added to this donation rotation lately, and the food pantry – plus several other rooms in the church – have been stuffed to the gills with food. (And the amazing managers, Jean and Bev, have been going nuts trying to sort it all out.)

So I’ve been thinking about abundance.

Can you imagine walking into a store and finding it’s sold out of chicken, or bread, or milk? For most of us it would be bizarre and alarming. We’re comforted knowing we have more options than we could possibly handle. So the shelves stay full, far exceeding demand.

With great abundance comes great waste.

I can’t even begin to speculate on how much food in my community ends up in the garbage – from home fridges (my own, certainly), but straight from grocery store shelves, too. All that food that ends up at the food pantry could so easily end up in a Dumpster. Plenty of other food does. (Check out the incredible and funky gallery at Wasted Food for some examples.) 

What’s more, a 2004 study found that “forty to fifty percent of all food ready for harvest never gets eaten” in America (read the whole article here.) That’s food from the fields, before we even start processing and packaging. It’s staggering.

But it’s necessary to know. Here’s why: The first question on the U.N. World Food Programme’s FAQ website is “Is there a food shortage in the world?”

The answer: “There is enough food in the world today for everyone to have the nourishment necessary for a healthy and productive life.”

But we still get statistics like the 925 million people in the world who don’t have enough food, and the millions of children who die of malnutrition and hunger-related diseases. (www.wfp.org/hunger/stats) 

I’d heard all this before. But seeing those tables at the food pantry last week, then noticing the stocked shelves at the grocery store this week has really gotten me processing the whole situation.

And it is staggering and exhausting and massive and frustrating. I can’t ultimately fix the fact that I choose from abundance while others have no options. But I can help contribute to the discussion. I can bring attention to the problems and some of the small solutions – like the food pantry -- and learn more about the people and organizations who are working on broader solutions.

I can bug whoever stumbles across my little bloggy podium here, and hope you get thinking too.

Next time you’re in the grocery store, look around and appreciate all that abundance. Don’t feel guilty or angry – feel inspired. Ask what you might be able to do.

A table full of bread that will be eaten and appreciated instead of thrown away is a start anyone can be part of.