Giving surplus a second life, Jerusalem’s food rescuers are turning leftovers into a lifeline

Cast your minds back to those “halcyon” days of the COVID-19 mandatory vaccines, masks, lockdowns, and all manner of logistical nightmares. Chiefly among the latter was the ordinarily simple matter of ensuring you had all the necessities of keeping body and soul together, naturally including vittles.

“Food security” was a term bandied about with high regularity as supplies of staples such as plain old bread were often not guaranteed. 

On my own moshav in the Jerusalem Hills, the arrival of the truck from Tnuva with its consignment of dairy products, or the appearance of the delivery man from the Angel bakery firm, were greeted with much glee and palpable relief.

Even if we are not visited by another pandemic anytime soon, in more normal circumstances we would do well to abide by the sagacious words of Britain’s favorite centenarian, iconic nature show frontman, and writer, Sir David Attenborough. When asked about the one thing he would like us all to remember with regard to Mother Earth, he simply replied: “Don’t waste.”

That sounds like a simple enough matter which can be applied in all sorts of quotidian areas. How about, for example, getting into the habit of arming ourselves with reusable bags the next time we pop along to our local makolet or supermarket, instead of merrily accruing plastic bags on offer at such enterprises.

Getting food to those who need it most

It is also a sentiment that sits particularly well with Daniella Seltzer. In fact, you could say it is her credo.

Seltzer is one of the movers and shakers behind the Jerusalem Food Rescuers initiative, which set up house at the Wholesale Market in Givat Shaul in 2019. The idea was to garner items from the crate loads of veggies and fruit coming into the vast market compound, pieces that were a little under- or overripe, bruised, or just might not look tempting to utopian TV commercial image-brainwashed shoppers.

As one can easily imagine, it wasn’t exactly smooth-going to begin with. The truck drivers hauling products from all over, site managers and supervisors, et al were used to getting the stuff through the gates, and duly apportioning it in accordance with their tried-and-tested, well-oiled procedure.

They weren’t about to let “an intruder” run their eyes and hands over the merchandise before it got to them. Or were they? Gradually, with due deference and persistence, Seltzer and her comrades in redemptive arms gained the trust and, eventually, respect and cooperation of the hard-nosed wholesale market folks.

Seltzer and the Rescuers team – almost all volunteers – are now the initial stop in the processing continuum and get to sift their way through the fruit and veggies first. The perceived inferior-quality products are subsequently sorted and find their way to various collection points, such as community centers, dotted around all areas of Jerusalem.

There, Jerusalemites of all walks of life, ages, and ethnic origins can then access healthy foodstuffs, gratis or at very affordable prices, that otherwise would probably not feature in their and their family’s daily diet. 

Now Seltzer is taking the Jerusalem Food Rescuers’ work to another level by initiating the Jerusalem Urban Food Forum and a concomitant formula for leveraging efforts to make better use of food resources around the city.

The plan identifies approximately 2,200 food-based enterprise businesses in Jerusalem with potential relevance to food rescue. That includes restaurants and cafés, supermarkets, grocery stores, fruit and vegetable shops, bakeries, food producers, caterers, and institutional kitchens.

Coordinating all of that, and succeeding in gathering, pooling, and distributing the edible offloads from all those businesses, presumably, involves layered management dynamics.

“This points to the need for a citywide mechanism that can connect surplus food sources with community demand in real time,” the plan explanatory material notes. Seltzer reckons that, once up and running smoothly, that could yield around 7,000 tons of food a year.

She also cautions that municipal collaboration is the linchpin here. She says City Hall would need to invest in “coordination, business participation, logistics, digital tools, and community distribution capacity.”

Jerusalem commits to global urban food policy efforts

There appears to be goodwill coming from that direction, with Mayor Moshe Lion signing the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact in June, thereby adding Jerusalem to the ranks of over 300 cities worldwide committed to building and cultivating more efficient food systems that help to get healthier nutrition to folks who couldn’t ordinarily manage that. The local signatories of the Pact roster include Tel Aviv, Bethlehem, and Jericho.

That, of course, has all sorts of implications. As the World Health Organization (WHO) states – in case it wasn’t patently clear – in its healthy diet guidelines: “Diet plays a critical role in shaping the health and wellbeing of both individuals and populations, and unhealthy diets are a major risk factor for disease and disability.”

Interestingly, there wasn’t a lot of talk about that in the context of COVID when, besides all the emergency measures and constraints imposed on us, that might have been an opportune time to advise us to nurture our immune systems by, for example, steering clear of processed foods and sugar-rich products. In so doing, we would have improved our health and made our bodies more resilient to future pandemics or any potentially harmful bacteria that may come our way at some stage.

Doing our best to make fruit and vegetables – good natural sources of vitamins, iron, fibers, and potassium – available to all and sundry makes complete sense. Seltzer and the other members of the Food Rescuers gang are all for that, and spreading the word as far and wide as possible.

“The idea is to establish a network of cities, working individually and in tandem, to generate a system whereby there is greater accessibility to healthy food, with greater efficiency and enhanced connectivity between various municipal departments and personnel,” Selzer explains.

Cohesion is the name of the game

The plan aims to involve as many components of the human and economic urban fabric in the venture: “We need to take all the players in the city and get them to operate with greater synchronicity. That is a feature of the Milan Urban Food Policy.”

The global urban concept also calls for mutually beneficial cross-border dynamics. “The idea is for cities to work together, and to learn from each other through Best Practices, to see what works best.”

The initiative’s nonprofit core philosophy adds an endearing quality to the venture. “I believe it is all carried out voluntarily,” Seltzer notes. “It is wonderful. In Milan they created a [municipal] department that feeds off the [Milan Urban Food Policy Pact] website. That is amazing.”

There are various takes on how to make better use of available comestible resources. While the Italian unit’s purview includes overseeing the work of physical food rescue hubs, Greece’s Boroume model opts for a more streamlined, decentralized approach based on matching food donors directly with recipient organizations. That obviates the need for a central holding facility for collection and distribution.

Then there is the Canadian Second Harvest food recovery system, which facilitates the collection of surplus, healthy food from businesses and redirects it to charities to fight both hunger and environmental waste.

Addressing Jerusalem’s poverty woes

Back here, in sunny, socioeconomically disadvantaged Jerusalem, Seltzer says the plan offers a slew of benefits and sorely needed solutions in all sorts of practical areas. That includes a resounding financial bottom line.

“Jerusalem’s annual food loss may reach more than 200,000 tons, with an economic value approaching NIS 1.8 billion,” she says.

Those are simply stunning statistics made all the more egregious by another startling figure – around 40% of the capital’s residents live below the poverty line. That’s approximately twice the national average. However, that sorry state of affairs is somewhat offset by the Rescuers’ work.

To date, the nonprofit has salvaged 1,300 tons of food and has provided a similar number of local families with a regular supply of food. They are also doing their best to maintain food security efforts in the long run and have educated close to 10,000 school students about the ins and outs of food sustainability.

Lion’s signature on the Pact paper may have paved the way for Jerusalem to join hands with a global network of cities that understand food as a strategic urban issue, but there are plenty of facts on the ground to be addressed before the theory can become a health-inducing, nutrition-supportive local reality.

Seltzer would love to see our local purse string holders follow Milan’s lead.

“If we are going to make this plan work, we need to have a dedicated department set up in the municipality. The department should engage in food as an urban infrastructure, just like any other area [of municipal activity] which is critical [for life in Jerusalem].

“We have an education administration, and people who engage in transport, housing, etc., and we have food, the most basic need in life, which is ignored. It is so obvious that it is missed.”

Taking a food breather

The evidence of that is in full view on downtown and neighborhood streets, with hundreds of food outlets packed most hours of the day as many of us guzzle down portions that are way too generously proportioned for our health and are often simply not nutritious.

Contemporary lifestyles also come into the remedial equation, as technology makes deeper inroads into the natural order of things, encroaches on a gentler, healthier daily tempo, and screams out for eating on the fly.

How many of us, for example, other than, perhaps, on Shabbat, sit down together with family and friends to enjoy a relaxing, joyful, and possibly bonding repast?

I remember visiting a friend in Chicago many years ago, long before the advent of the Internet and smartphones, looking on in amazement as her siblings and parents, in turn, descended on the kitchen, secured their helping of dinner, and promptly disappeared into their bedrooms to chow down in front of their individual TV sets. Nowadays, there are, of course, even more entertainment and online information distractions that get in the way of harmonious mealtime intervals.

The Jerusalem Food Rescuers’ plan addresses that largely unnoted feature of daily 21st-century life.

A systematic umbrella review on family mealtimes, conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States in 2023, found that more frequent family meals are associated with protection against poorer diet, obesity, risk behaviors, poorer mental health and wellbeing, and weaker educational outcomes among children and adolescents.

That report followed a 2015 NIH document which found that frequent family meals were associated with better dietary and psychosocial outcomes for children and adolescents.

It stands to reason if we view the nuclear family group as an emotional and physical staple of individual and societal health. The Jerusalem paper soberly notes that “not every family has the time, space, money, kitchen, stability, or emotional bandwidth to eat together regularly.”

That’s where outside help can come in handy. “The policy question is how schools, communities, and cities can create more opportunities for shared, dignified eating,” it continues.

Hadar Lavi, director of the Social Sustainability Department of the Municipality of Jerusalem, says City Hall is right behind Seltzer and her co-workers’ efforts.

“Jerusalem is promoting urban food policy by joining the international Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, and establishing the Jerusalem Urban Food Forum, in conjunction with the Jerusalem Food Rescuers, and elements from academia and civil society,” her statement read.

The benefits offered by the citywide initiative resonate with Lavi. “The Forum addresses the development of urban food policy vision with a view to furthering a sustainable food system, reducing food waste, bolstering food security and promoting healthy nutrition in the city.”

Lavi also singles out the Rescuers’ sterling work in the field. “The Jerusalem Food Rescuers are playing a significant role in bringing the issue to the urban agenda, connecting different parties and leading professional dialogue. This is a joint process which is evolving, and which is designed to formulate practical measures for Jerusalem’s unique needs.”

That makes for a well-articulated official statement, and one can only hope that, with Seltzer and her team spearheading solutions for this ongoing pressing need, the financial wherewithal and political backing will be there to put it all into universal, personal, ecological, and financial practice.

“Food rescue should be understood as part of urban policy, not only charity,” Seltzer stresses in her Plan notes.

“It connects waste reduction, food security, climate action, business participation, community resilience, public health, and education. The Jerusalem Urban Food Forum can be the place where these pieces are finally coordinated into one practical citywide plan.”■