Food drives are not the answer to poverty and hunger

December 6, 2021

PROOF principal investigator, Dr. Valerie Tarasuk, recently co-authored an op-ed in the Toronto Star with Dr. Elaine Power and Paul Taylor, Executive Director of FoodShare Toronto.

The piece, titled “Food drives are not the answer to poverty and hunger“, delves into the dangers of messaging that suggests food drives are a solution to food insecurity, and the need to focus on evidence-based policy action instead.

But we object to our national broadcaster helping to perpetuate the myth that if we all just “pitch in” for food banks, then we can “end hunger.” This comforting fable is a convenient smokescreen for government inaction on poverty and the intersecting gender, racist and ableist inequities that disproportionately keep women, BIPOC, and people with disabilities in poverty and food insecurity. These are problems that food bank donations can never fix.

Read the op-ed here