When we’re creating our menus and selecting the food for our weekend hunger bags, we consider the nutritional value of the food, its cost, its availability, and its appeal. But there is another aspect to feeding homeless and food insecure kids: recognizing their special dietary requirements. Some of those special needs are cultural or religious, but some are medically necessary, and that can make our job much more complicated.
Today, Board Member and Registered Dietician Marcy McAdams discusses the special requirements of creating a weekend hunger bag for gluten-intolerant kids, and why it’s so important that we recognize and honor these rare, but still critical, dietary needs.
What are the challenges of feeding kids with medically related dietary restrictions?
Medically related dietary restrictions are extremely important to rigorously follow because accidental exposure can potentially be fatal for a child. A gluten-free diet can be tricky to accommodate because there are a wide range of reasons for it to be followed. These reasons can be anywhere from a choice because the person feels “better” when avoiding gluten, to Celiac disease, where exposure even in the form of breathing in flour molecules from the air can cause a severe reaction that damages the intestines and negatively affects long term health.
What special considerations go into creating the menus for the gluten-free bag?
Because we have no way of knowing why a child has asked for the gluten-free bag, the default is always to accommodate the most extreme condition. In order to do that, we try to make sure every item in the bag is “certified”. This is stricter than the FDA’s requirements for calling something “gluten-free” and is verified independently by the manufacturer using a third party. Certification means that there are less than 20 parts per million of gluten and that the manufacturer has followed and documented strict cross contamination prevention.
Are there any special challenges in finding foods that meet the requirements?
Yes there are! The biggest challenge is cost, and often the higher cost is due to limited supply. Because it can be expensive for a company to get GF certified it is usually only done by specialty companies for a small range of products. This drives up the cost of the item, and the high cost plus small quantities means that a lot of the larger supply companies like Costco don’t carry many of the items. We have been known to drive around and buy an entire supply of an item from multiple regular grocery stores since it’s the only place we can find some of them!
Does this food cost more than the standard menus we create for the kids?
Definitely. It is not uncommon that a GF version of a food item is at least double the price of the regular.
Why is it important to serve kids with special dietary needs?
Quite simply, if a child does not have access to food that they are able to eat, then they can’t eat. This is especially true if the reason they can’t eat a certain food is that it will cause them actual physical harm. Sadly, a lot of food programs don’t have the budget or the bandwidth to accommodate dietary restrictions, which makes it even more important that we continue to do so! Sometimes our weekend hunger bags are the only food that a child has access to that they can actually eat!
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