Faire Offers Food for Thought

Although the hundreds of people who gathered last Thursday evening at South Coast Plaza Village to taste the specialties of 16 restaurants and 17 wineries were well fed, if not stuffed, hunger was ever-present with each bite.

The diners were there to raise funds for the Food Distribution Center of Orange County, which helps feed the county’s hungry and poor, and to help launch the community food drive the center will be conducting during November and December to collect food for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons.

Amidst the plenty was the reminder that about 320,000 people in Orange County are classified by the federal government as being “at risk” of going to bed hungry each night. The reminder was needed because in prosperous, affluent Orange County, where the average income exceeds the state and national averages, most people, including many who came to support the food drive, don’t know much about those hungry residents.

But the food bank does. Since it opened in October of 1983, the center has collected, sorted and allocated nearly 10 million pounds of food to the 170 charitable agencies that distribute it to hungry individuals and families.

That’s a lot of food, but it only amounts to about 20% of the estimated 30 million pounds of surplus and salvageable sustenance that is being wasted and dumped each year in Orange County.

Recovering more of those edibles and getting them to the hungry is what the food bank (and last Thursday’s Food Faire) is all about.

Aside from the food the center collects, each dollar it receives through donation can provide 24 meals to hungry residents. The money contributed by Food Faire patrons went entirely to the center. That’s because the wineries and the following South Coast Plaza and Village restaurants donated their food and staff members to the event: Alfredo’s Ristorante, Amato’s, Antonello’s Ristorante, Back Bay Rowing & Running Club, Bennigan’s, Cafe Pasquini, Forty Carrots, Gandhi, the Good Earth, La Baguette, Lettuce Patch, Meyerhoff’s, Piret’s, Pronto Ristorante, Upstart Crow & Co. and Verdugo’s.

The money will help. But even more important is the fact that hundreds of people were made more acutely aware of the fact that about 320,000 of their neighbors want for their daily bread while tons of food in this county of plenty go to waste each month. That’s food for thought.