KOMO News – by Hanna Brooks Olsen and Joshua Lewis
Every day in our community, people struggle with hunger; one in four children live in food-unstable households. But with help from volunteers and donors, the folks at Northwest Harvest give away millions of pounds of food each year.
All donations, however, are not created equally.
While most people donate much-needed non-perishable items — like peanut butter, soup, canned fruit, tuna, and other nutritious items — others seem to view the food bank as a place where weird food goes to die.
The good-natured employees at the Cherry Street Food Bank, which serves as many as 5,000 clients per week, save some of the strangest, oldest, and most interesting donated artifacts on a shelf they call “The Wall of Shame.”
Here are some of the “treasures” that Northwest Harvest employees have found. And if you’re wondering what’s best to donate to a food drive, stay tuned — tomorrow, we’ll post a gallery of the most sought donations.
All images by Joshua Lewis.
During the month of March, STAR 101.5 and KOMO News are teaming up with Northwest Harvest to help fight hunger in our community. Find out how you can help here.
Yes, there are some people that think that it is funny donating bad or spoiled food. I know first hand as I was on the street with absolutely no money and not a con man or thief I had to go to one of these food banks. Yea, they gave me some velveeta cheese, some butter, and two loaves of whole wheat bread – yea, I thought that I had itmade for a few dayss but as soon as I was going to do a cheese sandwich and opened that butter and that cheese it had green mold growing on the inside of the butter and the cheese was over half mold. The bread was the only thing that I ate and that was real chancey but when that is all ya got that is what ya get and you eat it – the bread that is, the butter and cheese was not edible at all 🙁 . That was about 30 or so years ago. I will never forget that and how the people treat the homeless after that.
I respect the homeless more now than ever now days and I wish others would too as you will never know when it is your turn to end up on the streets and homeless sleeping in a box on top of a heating vent so ya do not freeze
yeah, it’s rough being outside. I’ve known a few people who were homeless and it’s a hard trap to get out of. That started with “Reaganomics”, and before the 80’s, the only people who were homeless were hard-core alcoholics.
BUT: “the cheese was over half mold” — no, Digger, cheese is ALL mold. What you had was a new mold (the green stuff) growing on the old mold (the cheese)
Yes JR I guess you are right on that mold, I didn`t know that though back then. It was real nasty lookin` though but alteast it didn`t stink. Nope I could only eat that bread. 😉
Yes that was in Madison Wi. back in late `79 – mid `80s .
Just sayin’ that I don’t eat the stuff for that reason. Same with mushrooms.
There are a lot of food items that became part of many nations’ daily diets out of extreme poverty, but stayed there because people got used to eating the stuff.
The “Irish potato famine” brought us a lot of recipes that are pure starch, The Chinese eat the planet’s bottom-feeding garbage on a bed of rice, and Americans like “biscuits and gravy”, which was once a lot like “bread and water” with a chunk of fat melted in it.
Wine and cheese sounds like a delicacy today, but the combination is the result of people eating and/or drinking stuff that went bad on ’em long ago.
Yes JR, You are exactly right too about that.
I guess the blue mold is good green isn’t. Confusing at best.
I’ll take the Yoders bacon !!!
I’ll take the bacon tooth paste!!