Guest Blogger Sherri Hubbell offers her take on the incongruities of supermarket charitable donations and the long reach of corporate food interests.

Sherri  has been a writer, editor and corporate communications consultant since 1980. Her articles on writing style, culinary arts, gardening and smarter living appear on HubPages  where she writes as Sally’s Trove and on eHow where she is a frequent contributor.

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My daughter and I food-shop together on Monday afternoons. Food shopping is a chore that neither of us particularly cares for, but spending time in each other’s company makes this chore a sometimes enjoyable and often educational event.

Last Monday’s food excursion led us to one of our local supermarkets where we each chose a small cart and navigated the aisles using our grocery lists as maps.

Making Healthy Food Choices

Both my daughter and I are mindful about the nutritional values of the foods we select and so we read labels, inspect produce freshness, and choose organic foods whenever we can. We rarely use food coupons because most are for processed foods we don’t care to consume. However, every now and again my sharp-eyed daughter will spot an “instant-off” coupon for something like canned tuna or bottled juice. Of the two of us, she is the more talented bargain hunter, possessing a certain radar for deals and sales.

Would You Like to Donate a Dollar?

That Monday afternoon, when my daughter started to load her groceries onto the check-out conveyor, the cashier asked if she’d like to donate a dollar to benefit local food banks, among them MANNA (Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance). If she did, the cashier continued, she’d also receive a booklet of recipes that included ten dollars in coupons.

My daughter didn’t hesitate to make a five-dollar donation. As the cashier moved one item after the other from the conveyor, over the price scanner, and onto the end of the counter, I could see my child’s mind channeling in two directions: saving money and donating to charity.

I knew she was thinking that the coupon savings would mean an effective ten dollars off this grocery purchase, and that the five-dollar donation would not only help those who are in need of food but would, as well, demonstrate her commitment to supporting non-profit organizations.  For the last ten years, my daughter has been a riding instructor and program director for a non-profit therapeutic riding center. As a career professional in the not-for-profit sector, she knows the value of even the smallest monetary contribution.

The cashier gave my daughter two booklets, one for her and one for me. We slipped the booklets into our cloth grocery bags and headed for home. On the drive, we chatted about a number of things not related to food, such as whether dying eyebrows was a good or bad idea and how annoyed we were that Punxsutawney Phil seemed to be way off in his prediction of an early spring. The booklets at the bottoms of our bags had been quite forgotten.

I dropped my daughter and her groceries off at her apartment, went home, and put my purchases away. The last item left in one of my bags was the recipe and coupon booklet. I made myself a cup of fresh coffee and a snack of homemade oatmeal bread and jam, and sat down to read. I thought to myself, what was I going to buy and for how much to save ten dollars, and would any of the recipes offer something new and appealing?

What’s in that Booklet?

The photos accompanying the eight recipes were gorgeous. Since I was snacking in anticipation of dinner, I could feel my already stimulated salivary glands pumping up a notch at the idea of eating these beautiful foods. But as I read the recipe ingredients, most of which were the highly processed foods featured in the coupons at the back of the booklet, I had to chuckle. What was I thinking? That those coupons would be for organic foods or fresh produce?

While enjoying the irony of the situation my daughter and I thoughtlessly walked into, I recalled the cashier’s comment about this donation campaign benefiting local food banks including MANNA. In an instant, my chuckle turned into a silent grimace.

Processed Food Recipes and Coupons

Here is MANNA’s mission statement:

“Improving health. Delivering nourishment. Especially for people at acute nutritional risk due to life-threatening illness, MANNA…prepares and delivers delicious nourishing meals and counsel, empowering individuals to battle illness and improve their quality of life.”

I wonder if even one of MANNA’s nutritionists would recommend either the good-looking recipes appearing in the booklet or most of the coupon products as healthy food choices for “…people at acute nutritional risk due to life-threatening illness…” 

Are We Being Duped?

I feel duped, although not particularly by the irony of my own situation; I feel cheated in a much broader way. What does it say about us as a culture that we participate in the big-business charade of turning corporate contributions into the self-serving? Are we so lacking in critical thinking that we fail to see the hypocrisy in purchasing just the kinds of foods that would most likely never be a part of a meal provided by MANNA for a client “at acute nutritional risk”?

There is no doubt that supermarket / food industry charity campaigns such as this raise millions of dollars to aid in the fight against hunger and malnutrition. But are they going about it the right way?