Canada

Here's the thing conservatives generally can't get through their thick skulls... if you respect most people they'll respect you and take a modest amount - those folks that will hoard are generally not worth policing more than the minimum amount... it's cheaper to just account for their greed than hire security personnel.

I don't give a damn if some people are taking advantage. I'd rather a small proportion of people exploit the system than folks who need it be denied.

I can answer this. The stuff that nobody takes off the shelf eventually gets thrown out too. But if you put brown rice and rice pasta in a hamper for someone that won't eat them, and white bread and white pasta in someone's hamper that won't eat them, 100% of those staples go to waste.

This is anecdotal so take it or leave it but some of the best dumpster diving I've ever done was behind food banks in some regions because things like quinoa and apple cider vinegar and brown rice pasta are the last to go while white bread and Kraft dinner and instant rice are hot sellers.

I'm happy to stock up on the stuff other people find too weird to eat. If those things end up in hampers they get chucked anyhow. Letting people choose is a far more efficient system.

Lots of banks for instance will give you more veggie options if you don't eat meat. Or more eggs if you don't want meat. Or more frozen foods if you don't want canned or instant meals. Etc etc.

The hamper system tries to shoot the middle. Nobody "eats what they get" if they literally can't stomach the stuff "they get" and frankly expecting poor people to choke down calories that someone else picks out for them and expecting them to be grateful for it is kinda a sick way to look at it. Beggars can't be choosers and all this... In a culture that throws away roughly fifty percent of the food grown and processed on this continent in the name of profit? Idk. Why not let people take what they'll use and leave the rest?

If you actually understand how much food goes into the landfill vs what gets diverted to food banks the entire concept of food scarcity falls apart anyhow.

Any unwanted item forced upon a family will go uneaten and become 100% waste. An item that most people don’t want that sits on the shelf at least stands a chance of being taken by someone who will eat it.

Food banks regularly communicate their needs to donors so that the most commonly needed staples will have abundant stock. In the hamper model where you’re just forcing people to take stuff then you don’t actually know what’s being used, what’s most commonly needed, and what you can mostly ignore.

Besides what's already been said, even if there is food waste from things left on the shelves, at least this allows us to know that certain items are undesirable for everyone and to avoid acquiring more of them. If you hand out a bit to everyone and they all end up in different trash bins, you'll never know about it and you'll never fix the problem.