The Struggle to Get Enough to Eat Is Real, Even When You're Living in a Shelter
People experiencing homelessness often go without sufficient nutritious meals, even when they're living in shelters.
I used to believe that it’s better to give money to a homeless shelter than to an unhoused person, because the shelter would make better decisions with the money. Shelters and soup kitchens provide nutritious meals, right? So I should not give cash to panhandlers or buy food for a homeless person outside a restaurant or corner store. Unfortunately, as I learned recently, this is not always the case. It turns out that many people who rely on shelters for a place to sleep cannot depend on them to provide enough nutritious food to stay healthy.
Nutrition security is a hot topic these days. The “food as medicine” movement aims to improve the nutrition of people with low incomes through food security screenings at the doctor’s office, prescriptions for fruits and vegetables, and medically tailored meals for people who require special diets. This effort to make healthy food more accessible to a broader population is promising, but it doesn’t go far enough. Similarly, concern about whether food pantries are providing sufficiently healthful food is well-intentioned, but still doesn’t meet the needs of many people who could benefit most from consistent nutrition and a balanced diet—those experiencing homelessness.
Surprisingly, there is little discussion about the quality of food served at homeless shelters and soup kitchens. I have a friend who is living in a shelter, who has shared photos and descriptions of some of the meals she’s been given. Sometimes it is no more than a cup of soup and some bread.
Imagine living in a shelter and your evening meal is what most of us would consider an appetizer. Where do you go for more food if you are still hungry? If you have a little cash and no mobility challenges, you could go to a cheap restaurant, like Subway or McDonald’s. You might try to order a pizza, but some shelters discourage or don’t allow restaurant delivery orders. If you have SNAP benefits, you could buy some non-perishable food, like granola bars or instant Ramen noodles, but shelters often prohibit residents from keeping their own food in the shelter, and theft is an issue as shelters provide little in the way of personal space and security. An arcane and harmful SNAP rule prohibits individuals from buying hot food—such as a rotisserie chicken or prepared food from a grocery store’s hot bar—and cooking options in shelters are limited to nonexistent for residents—which eliminates most options for individuals obtaining healthy food outside of what shelters offer.
This can mean suffering outright hunger pain until the next meal time arrives, especially if food allergies, religious customs, or health concerns prevent shelter residents from being able to eat what is provided. The lack of consistency in or oversight of shelter meals also means that residents may face serious nutrition deficits. Malnutrition is bad for anyone, but for people who require a restricted or modified diet due to a health condition, such deficiencies can be deadly.
For example, a 2017 study by Samantha Harmon found that meals at the shelters it studied contained more than double the recommended level of sodium, a potentially serious problem for people with high blood pressure. The Harmon study cited research finding that food served in shelters did not meet the nutritional requirements for young children or adults. Harmon’s nutritional analysis of shelter meals found that they did not meet the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) for “calories for men, carbohydrates, total fiber, calcium, and vitamin D across all genders.”
Surely shelters must meet nutritional standards in the meals they serve, right? It turns out there are no federal regulations for the nutritional content of most shelter meals, “unless the shelter is receiving financial assistance from a state or federal program,” such as the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP). The only other existing regulations have to do with food safety and sanitation, certainly important issues, but nutrition and food sufficiency merit their own regulations.
Shelters often lack the funding to purchase sufficient healthy food for all their residents on a regular basis. For example, nine shelters in Boston, Massachusetts studied in 2015 spent an average of $1.03 per meal per person. The study reported that “the most significant barrier to accessing healthy foods was budget constraints.”
Instead, homeless shelters are forced to rely on food donated by individuals, local stores, or restaurants. The mix of foods shelters receive changes all the time, requiring them to make meals from the foods they are given, prioritizing perishable food likely to go bad soonest. Shelters often lack the resources to prioritize residents’ dietary needs, cultural preferences, or health. Women in one study reported that the food “had little variety, poor taste, poor nutritional quality, and did not help them manage their chronic illnesses.”
Why are shelter meals unregulated, and why is nobody talking about the quality of these meals? Advocates push for improvements in the Farm Bill to SNAP and the charitable food sector, better nutritional standards in school meals, and more funding for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), all of which are absolutely important. Food banks have made great progress in shifting from distributing whatever is donated, much of it lacking in nutrients, to prioritizing fresh fruits and vegetables and other foods high in nutritional content. I have been working on food and nutrition program policy for the better part of 25 years, and I do not recall ever hearing advocates talking about the quality or sufficiency of food in homeless shelters or at soup kitchens. I include myself in this—it is an area I simply never gave any attention. I am also at the beginning of my research on this topic, and I am hopeful that I am wrong: that advocates and researchers are doing important work in this area and making real headway. If readers know about such research, I invite you to contact me.
If we are concerned about the health and nutrition of low-income people, we should be paying attention to the meals served in shelters, where residents have no say in what they are served and few food options outside of those meals. Meals served to people with no homes should be held to high nutritional standards, certainly no less stringent than the nutrition standards that apply to school meals. If shelters lack the staff and funding to meet nutrition standards, then foundations and government agencies at all levels need to step up, and provide more funds to make sure that shelter residents are given healthy meals.
People without homes need and deserve fresh, nutritious, and delicious food as much as anyone else does. Let’s make that the standard, and begin working together to find the best ways to meet it.