The inflated costs of food are likely to be taking a bite out of your budget, and limited supplies or rising prices for ingredients may have you seeking substitutes. For the team of chefs and dietitians at Food & Friends, it feels like every day is a new challenge to find the required ingredients for our medically tailored meals and groceries.
Some key items from suppliers are suddenly becoming unavailable, and wholesale deliveries are frequently missing a vital part of the order. Food & Friends is home-delivering about 170,000 meals per month in 2023, which includes both freshly prepared meals and groceries. Precision is important in what we do, so if a shipment is missing a supply of fresh oats for example, we must find a replacement ingredient with the correct nutritional value.
“We cannot make apple sauce from air. We are having daily conversations about what ingredient substitutions we can make to give adults and children with serious illnesses the medically tailored meals they need,” says Becca Kahn, MA, RD, LD, Nutrition Services Director.
Executive Chef Rasheed Abdurrahman is working with an array of providers and companies to meet new needs. It takes patience and persistence, and it often feels like he is patching new anomalies every day. In a restaurant setting, there may be more flexibility to make a substitution, but with medically tailored meals, there is no room to compromise on quality or nutrition.
“The illnesses those we serve are dealing with are more acute coming out of the pandemic. Many people did not make their doctor’s visits, so the need for what we deliver is even greater. Meanwhile, scarcity is changing people’s behaviors. Buying habits start to change when people think they are going to be facing a recession, so certain things become scarcer.”
As food becomes more expensive, less healthy options begin to become more common in households. For the adults and children with serious illnesses, being served by Food & Friends, this may make symptoms worse. Also, the expiration of pandemic-era SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits is leaving less money in our neighbors’ pockets, which is likely to have a negative impact on the health of our neighbors receiving SNAP.
The biggest challenge is not the food supplies themselves, but the affordability of bulk items, and the actual supply chain production and distribution. Rasheed shares that “workers have not returned to the plants, and we are working very hard with our suppliers to address the shortages that causes.” When an ingredient runs out, it creates a need for a solution to be found quickly.
[photo]: Medically tailored groceries being staged for packing. If beans, rice and tortillas are on the menu, and tortillas don’t arrive, we have to find ingredients to substitute in.
Charles Battle has managed the grocery program at Food & Friends for 25 years, and he has seen shortages before, but nothing like this. Charles is working closely with our kitchen receiver Nathan Dupree each day to make sure each order is fulfilled to specifications, because trucks are often showing up missing items without warning.
This also presents challenges for our team of registered dietitians who work closely with neighbors with serious illnesses on their diets. Changing food habits is hard, and if one of our dietitians has a breakthrough with someone, and the ingredient they began liking becomes unavailable, the team must encourage a substitute, and it may be a new texture, taste, or consistency.
“My team is trying to produce substitution guides, but we need to be flexible or broad because we are not sure what products will be available any given week. We are working with the internal tools we have and adapting,” says Becca.
You, and our community, helped Food & Friends weather a life-changing pandemic. We became stronger, more adaptive, and we never closed doors. In fact, we home-delivered more meals than ever without ever sacrificing our commitment to the families depending on us, or on the quality of what we produce. But we are responding to a new crisis specific to the food industry: excessive costs, low supplies, and unpredictable distribution.
You can help support our readiness to respond to emergency shortages and situations by donating to Food & Friends today or helping us raise awareness. Your investment in Food & Friends has an immediate impact on health equity and helps us strengthen our local communities together. Thank you for helping deliver hope, one meal at a time.
[photo]: Our freshly prepared home-delivered meals have recipes that call for exacting nutritional values and caloric content. If one ingredient disappears, a backup ingredient must fulfill the exact needs of the adults and children with serious illnesses we serve.