What Is Food For Free?
Food for free is a food rescue agency that picks up wasted food that grocery stores throw out and brings to food to agencies that distribute it. They shuttle food around with their home delivery program and deliver food to people who don't have access to a food pantry or physically cannot leave their homes. Food For Free also has school programs where, in Cambridge and Somerville, they address child food insecurity and families that are food insecure with school-aged children. This includes a backpack program which gets food to children on the weekends.
Stephanie Smith
Stephanie Smith is the Program Director of Food For Free. Having lived in the Boston area for quite some time now, she has a lot of hands-on experience with the issue of Food Deserts.
She has various concerns about the after-effects that occur when living in neighborhoods affected by the issue.
​
She also underlines that many schools in Boston have the tendency to throw away food. Food for free recognizes this wasteful pattern and so turned it into something positive, by repacking foods that were not used and then handing them out to those in need.
About the interview
"Not one size fits all stories. It’s really easy for society and statisticians to want to group people into categories and understand why people are food insecure and why they are not healthy."
Stephanie Smith believes that people should not generalize all people in one story. Not every person has options like others. It's important to educate oneself on an issue before forming opinions on major issues.
"If you grow up in an area where there is no access to organic produce or produce generally and it’s expensive and there’s just a bunch of fast food that’s going to be assumed to be the cheapest food."
Many neighborhoods don't have access to nutritious food options. Even if they have some type of access, the product is normally very expensive due to it being a small neighborhood store. Families need to feed their children and themselves, and fast food is usually the cheapest option available. It is easily accessible and better prices compared to healthy food. The inaccessibility of healthy food makes it very difficult to choose healthy food options, especially when it becomes out of their budget.
​