Food Preferences of Users of the Emergency Food System

Food pantries as partners in population health: Assessing organizational and personnel readiness for delivering nutrition-focused charitable food assistance

“…[33][34][35] Our study found that the majority of food pantry personnel have adequate health literacy and many have a personal history of food assistance program use and/or a diagnosis with diabetes or hypertension, which makes these individuals ideal candidates for a similar peer support role in food pantry-based health programs. Furthermore, food bank-sponsored trainings for food pantry workers on health-related topics may be a natural extension for many food banks that have traditionally offered pantry personnel training programs, primarily on the topics of food safety [36][37][38] or building agency capacity, 36-39 though some provide nutrition education and healthful food stocking strategies to personnel. 40,41 Personnel in this study overwhelmingly preferred training at their food pantry, and train-the-trainer models align with these learning preferences, where a single professional nutrition educator employed by the food bank trains food pantry personnel to provide health and nutrition education.…”

A Model to Drive Research-Based Policy Change: Improving the Nutritional Quality of Emergency Food

“…3 A previous CWH survey of food pantry clients found that 98% of clients identified "healthy foods" as being "important" or "very important" to them and their families in regards to the types of emergency foods they prefer. 7 From these results, the key issue identified for the stakeholder convening was "How can the needs of commercial donors be best reconciled with (1) the desire of food banks to distribute more nutritious food within the EFN and (2) the desire of EFN clients to receive more nutritious food?" During the stakeholder convening, a representative of a large corporate donor reported that one of the company's major concerns is having "zero waste" with respect to food products in its inventory and that this concern is a factor in determining what products are donated to the EFN.…”

Food preferences, personality and parental rearing styles: analysis of factors influencing health of left-behind children

“…For example, women in particular are prone to 'emotional eating' when feeling stressed and are more likely to crave sweet foods [46]. Past studies have shown that that food preferences result from interactions between internal (physiological and psychological) and external causes (for example, economics, education and culture) [17,47,48]. Our study showed that a higher percentage of LBC disliked vegetables and fruits.…”