By Caitlin Brezinski

Food fight for a good cause

Oct 7, 2014 | 4:46 PM

Prince Albert’s Share-A-Meal Food Bank is getting ready to fight with food.  The Great Canadian Food Fight, a national campaign amongst food banks, seeks to collect as much food donations as possible over a 48-hour period.

Wes Clark, one of the co-managers at Share-A-Meal, said they caught word of the food fight last year and decided it would be fun to get into a friendly competition between cities.

“It’s just to do something a little different than just a flat out food drive,” he said.

People can collect food anytime, but must drop them off at the food bank during the 48 hours from Oct. 16 at 6 p.m. until Oct. 18 at 6 p.m., for it to count. 

While this is only Prince Albert’s second time taking part in the Food Fight, Clark said they are aware of the competition they are up against. 

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“I think Regina’s a very hard city to tackle. They wound up being a pound and a half for every person that lives there, so that’s a fairly tough act,” he said. 

The Regina Food Bank has won the food fight for the last five years.

Todd McCauley, manager of special events and marketing at the Regina Food Bank said last year, Regina collected 325,000 pounds of food and has broken the record every consecutive year.

“The Regina community and surrounding areas in general have really stepped up,” he said.

The Great Canadian Food fight coincides with World Food Day, which falls on Oct. 16.  McCauley said this is a crucial time of year to collect food because people are more in need.

“It’s getting close to holidays and the kids are back in school and that sort of thing so it becomes a lot more difficult to actually put food on the table.  The amount of people we deal with each month seems to increase over these fall and winter months,” he said.

Clark said this campaign is critical for the operation of the Food Bank.

“Without food, it’s pretty hard for us to help the people out in our city,” he said.

While the Food Fight is for a good cause, the competition is on.

“We kind of want to put the friendly sort of push out to the other food banks to try and knock us off the throne,” McCauley said.

Clark said he is ready for the challenge and hopes to collect more than the 21,000 pounds collected last year.

“We’re getting all fired up for the food fight.”

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On Twitter: @princealbertnow