Naperville’s largest food pantry doesn’t feel much like a food pantry anymore. The grocery market at the north side nonprofit Loaves & Fishes Community Services has been transformed into something more, well, market-like.
Designed to encourage healthy dietary choices and support the dignity of low-income families who turn to the agency for food assistance, the updated layout offers “a much better experience for the clients,” said Megan Selck, Loaves & Fishes’ interim president and CEO.
Features of the new market space include more easily accessible shelves, brighter lighting and the “perimeter concept” common in retail supermarkets that displays meat, dairy and fresh produce items around the store’s periphery.
“The idea really was to give it a more open grocery feel, almost like a farmers market,” said Jane Macdonald, director of nutrition and wellness at Loaves & Fishes.
Clients now will find it easier to make selections that fit their families’ preferences and lifestyle, and to look ahead to the coming days’ meals. Macdonald said the organization has been providing educational support, including classes that focus on healthy cooking, but often it’s a challenge for clients to come in at the scheduled times, because of the complications of arranging for transportation, child care or time away from work.
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“Our concept has been one of nutrition nudging, for lack of a better word,” she said. “We’re just trying to remind people that even though you’re in a situation where you feel as if don’t have as many choices, you can still plan your menus.”
Paralleling the federal government’s MyPlate campaign, the pantry operation’s goal is to foster a habit of building meals that are no less than half fruit and vegetable selections.
“I think that keeps things healthful, it keeps things respectful,” Macdonald said. “You kind of lose track of yourself sometimes, when you’re feeling like a victim.”
The agency – which also recently honed its client service model to help identify more precisely each client’s best path for returning to self-sufficiency – was able to make the layout change after relocating much of the 30 to 45 tons of food it takes in weekly to warehouse and office space it has rented nearby. Volunteer crews spent much of March moving dry and canned items into the 5,000-square-foot warehouse space, from which the market’s shelves now will be restocked. The area that had been used for storage of nonperishable goods in the High Point Drive headquarters’ back room now is lit through windows that previously were obstructed by the high-stacked inventory, and volunteer helpers now have more elbow room as well.
Also helping make the market upgrades possible was a pair of grants that came from the DuPage Community Foundation and the UPS Foundation, totaling $32,000. Selck said much of the funding went to the purchase of a sprawling stand-up showcase refrigeration unit that considerably expanded the capacity for perishable produce, dairy items and meat.
When Loaves & Fishes moved from its previous location on Fifth Avenue to the newly built High Point site a little more than four years ago, the new facility was considered more than spacious enough to meet the pantry operation’s needs. But despite more than doubling the floor area and tripling both the amount of food that could be distributed and the number of hours the pantry could operate each week, the agency’s operators had recognized by last year that more room was needed as its client rolls continued to grow. Today an average of 120 new families come in every month seeking help, Selck said. Each usually makes about six visits for groceries over a three-month period, she said.
A big piece of the agency’s mission now is helping families exit the social services network for good, through assorted empowerment initiatives. Macdonald said that includes finding out how to avoid the need for medical attention that comes along with chronic health woes tied to insufficient nutrition, such as high blood pressure, diabetes and some types of cancer.
“Even depression is related to poor diet,” she said.
According to research done at the University of California at Berkeley, 29 million Americans have diabetes and an additional 86 million are unknowingly pre-diabetic. Type 2 diabetes, once virtually unheard of in children, is becoming more common, the researchers reported, and those who live in homes with unstable food sources are 50 percent more likely to develop diabetes.
Changing long-standing dietary habits will entail a learning curve, and a shift of thinking for people living in a culture that equates bigger with better – an oversized box of sugary cereal, for example, can appear to be a better bargain than a small but nutrient-dense package of granola, Macdonald said. But she and other social services providers consider the potential outcome well worth the effort.
“We’ve come a long way in targeting nutrition and health,” she said. “I think the next step is deciding: do we want a policy that addresses these things?”
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