Twenty-five years ago, hungry people who came to food banks got boxes and cans of food and precious little else. Today, fresh fruits and vegetables make up an increasingly large portion of the vital food the nation's 200-plus food banks distribute.
And in the minds of some, two unsung heroes in Los Angeles, Susan Evans and Peter Clarke, are the main reason for the shift.
"Today, we are able to distribute more than 500 million pounds of fresh produce each year," in large part because of the work Clark and Evans did, says Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of Feeding America. It's a network of most of the nation's food banks, providing food for 5.7 million people weekly, 37 million per year.
It was in 1991 that the two University of Southern California professors first heard of retired produce wholesaler Mickey Weiss. He had started a program in Los Angeles in 1987 to get produce distributors to send fruits and vegetables that were still good but a little too old to sell to food banks instead of throwing them away. It was a great idea but oddly, no one had copied the program.
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