By Aaron Dorman
MERILLVILLE — It may not be the Goodyear Blimp, but as far as branded vehicles go, the NWI Food Bank Truck is still a welcome sight moving around the south shore.
The latest addition to the Food Bank’s vehicle fleet is a refrigerated truck branded with the company’s logo and new signage that touts their “Food is Medicine,” denoted by a grocery bag with a stethoscope.
The truck will allow the org to maintain what Food Bank executive director Victor Garcia describes as the “cold chain,” delivering more produce to more locations across the Region.
The branding also makes sure the community is more aware of the direct tailoring of certain food or nutrients towards specific medical needs that the program entails, Garcia said.
“We’re really excited to have this new truck,” Garcia said. “In terms of food we’ve salvaged, the team is doing a great job and we are on track to have one of the most successful years in the organization’s history.”
The latter is a reference to food left over from retailers and wholesalers that would normally end up in a landfill, but the Food Bank can still deliver to agency partners, such as food pantries.
This summer, Garcia said the Food Bank has been able to expand programs to provide free meals to school-aged children.
“Salvaged food” sounds less than desirable, but speaks to the unfortunate reality that a lot of food that is thrown out hasn’t expired yet, but is too close to the use-by date for grocery stores to feel like they can confidently sell.
It also applies to bulk orders where only some of the product may have an issue; the food bank accepts food such as chicken meat, Garcia explained, where one package is compromised, but the rest may be acceptable (after going through a review process).
Even beyond shelf life, one of the most common “salvaged” items are canned goods tied to a particular movie or marketing campaign, where the food is still good inside but the branding on the outside is obsolete and needs to make way for the next promotional item.
And when food, salvaged or procured from local farms and other partners, is able to make its way to food insecure neighborhoods, that food becomes medicine, Garcia said.
“Our programs are built for what health care partners need,” Garcia said. “We’re not just tackling the underlying health condition through food, but also addressing the lack of access to foods that (participants) should be eating.”
The latest program, which began in March, uses food deliveries to combat mental health for partner residents.
Garcia said he was particularly proud of how the Food Bank has helped deliver food to help address maternal health, and lower rates of infant or maternal mortality.
Last week, the Indiana Department of Health touted a “historic” decrease in infant mortality rates across the state based on preliminary data from last year. Of all counties with measurable data, Porter County showed the lowest infant mortality rate during the period 2019-2023, according to IDOH data.