Washington families grapple with food insecurity: 'It is a question of survival'

At Food Lifeline in Seattle's South Park neighborhood, the warehouse is a hive that is constantly buzzing and beeping. We're creating about 233,000 meals every single day. This warehouse will move somewhere between 75 and 80 million pounds of food this year alone. In 2022, Food Lifeline served about 1 million people across western Washington. In 2023, that number rose more than 60%. We thought after the pandemic we would drop from a million guests at food banks down to 700 or 800,000. We went up to 1.6 and it was just very quickly, very rapidly. Mark Coleman with Food Lifeline says they couldn't see this coming. We're having a hard time providing enough food for each of the 300 food banks we work with. Every day we're just struggling to get as much food out to them as possible. It's one of the reasons Chris Garrett is here, volunteering her time. It's just so important for survival. I mean, it is a question of survival for a lot of these families. And this is just one of, I'm afraid, not enough options. The increased need seen across the country. The national poverty rate skyrocketing by 234%. Coleman says that's due in part to the end of pandemic era food stamp benefits and inflationary grocery prices. Groceries are a key indicator in those numbers. So when you see grocery prices going up 20 to 30% over the last two or three years, I think you're naturally going to see that poverty level go up. At Food Lifeline, the impact of those rising poverty levels is seen in the faces they serve more children and seniors. In 2023, they helped 100,000 toddlers. Food Lifeline tells me the warehouse is about 75% full. They still need more wholesale donations from farms, grocery stores, manufacturers. Food drives are also very helpful because that food that comes in is most of the time all shelf stable. However, the food that does come in goes out within a couple of days anyway. Holly Menino, Come On News.