No food wasted: Winnipeg Harvest shares 1,300 kg of surplus food monthly

Winnipeg Harvest's Meal Share Program, which collects thousands of pounds of surplus, prepared food from restaurants, nursing homes and hotels and distributes it to soup kitchens, schools and daycares, is growing.

The program has expanded in the past couple of years, with new donors, restaurants and commercial kitchens, coming on board to distribute more than 1,300 kilograms of prepared food every month. That represents more than 10,000 meals per month.

"The thought of excess food at restaurants or hospitals going to waste where it could otherwise feed people, I just thought this seemed so obvious that we should try and do something," said James Cohen, president and CEO of Gendis Inc. 

Cohen donated Meal Share's first refrigerated truck. A key part of the program is the refrigerated transportation of perishable foods at proper temperatures. A second refrigerated truck has also been donated.

Harvest said the plan is to expand Meal Share by five new venues every year.

"I just can't stand the thought of wasting perfectly good food," Cohen said. "There are millions of hungry people and right here in our own community, in a very wealthy country like Canada, there are people that go hungry," he said.

So the executive donated a refrigerated, cube truck in 2012, but it wasn't until this month he saw it in action during a ride along with CBC.

The truck stopped at MTS Centre to collect food from Centreplate, food supplier for MTS Centre and True North Sports and Entertainment and a regular contributor to Meal Share.

Centreplate donates food after all Jets and Moose games and after many concerts. More than 1,270 kilograms of food were donated from September to November of this year.

"Wow, that's a lot of food," Cohen said, loading trays of perogies, meatballs and gravy, roasted vegetables and wild rice into the refrigerated truck.

"What we just picked up probably could feed a couple of thousand people easily. I'm just multiplying the number of trays of food and what's in each tray. And then multiply that by 41 regular season Jets games, Moose games, pre-season games, hopefully playoff games, that's a lot of food."

"It's very encouraging and that's just one stop. It's pretty amazing," he said.

Cohen said he hoped the Meal Share Program could be expanded.

What was is like for Cohen to see his donation at work?

"Fantastic," he said.