More room for fresh food at Waterloo Region food bank

More room for fresh foodwill be available at the Food Bank of Waterloo Region, thanks to a recentexpansion oftheir on-siteFresh ApproachesFood Centre.

The Fresh Approaches program, which includes the centre's expansion,aims to meet the growing demand to providefresh fruit, vegetables and meatto the communitysaid Wendi Campbell, chief executive officer of the Food Bank of Waterloo Region.

"There is a really important community conversation about fresh food," Campbell told CBCNews.

"We want to be able to support the overall health and well-being of the community."

Storefor future use

The added storage will go toward being able to handle more fresh foodcoming in, store it and distribute it.

"It's going to allow us to take large quantities of product that we can't distribute out to the community quickly and save for future use," she said.

For example, the food bank received a large quantity of squash in the fall of 2017, Campbell said. The new processing room will allow staff to cut it up, repackage it and freeze it for use in the winter months.

She adds they plan to use the same method on large quantities of meat and even coffee.