Food-Related Charities

Bread for All (Photo credit: C. Bertelsen)

With Christmas coming up (you can’t miss it because the catalogs fill your mailbox nearly every day, don’t they?), maybe it’s time to reconsider buying all those gifts that nobody really wants.

Bon Appetit magazine, in their November 2008 issue, lists five food-related charities that might be worth looking into for alternative gift-giving ideas:

Brown Bag Designs Cookie Molds: Donates profits from one of its cookie shapes to charity.

FreeRice.com : Donates rice to the U.N. Food Programme. Click on the link to answer a trivia question and the sponsors donate the rice.

Hot Bread Kitchen: This not-for-profit kitchen trains recent immigrants, mostly women, in baking and business management skills

Seattle Chocolate Company’s Survivor Chick Chocolate Bar: Donates money for women’s cancer research.

Elephant Pepper Hot Sauces: Funds elephant conservation in Africa.

Tours to Preserve Andean Ruins and Hummingbird Habitats: Peru’s Marvelous Spatuletail Lodge trail-building tours.

Here’s another couple of charities that I like:

Feeding America (formerly Second Harvest): Their mission statement reads: “Our mission is to feed America’s hungry through a nationwide network of member food banks and engage our country in the fight to end hunger.”

And don’t forget Paul Newman’s legacy, “Newman’s Own.” It’s easy to give: just buy the products at your local grocer’s. All profits go to charity.