Teresa White’s mission of getting nutritious meals to unhoused individuals has taken about three years, lots of experimentation, and countless conversations, including with a NASA chef. Now, Dare to Care Food Bank – where White (also known as Chef T) serves as Executive Chef – is ready to pioneer an innovative method of feeding the unhoused by producing and distributing healthy, freeze-dried meals.
Dare to Care’s community kitchen has long prepared meals for children, low-income seniors, and individuals with medical needs. But Chef T saw one food-insecure population for whom prepared meals presented a special challenge. “We didn’t have a very good method for offering high quality, nutrient-dense meals for the folks who live on the street,” she said.
Coming from a military family and having had a military career of her own, Chef T’s first thought was to produce military-style MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). But when the process and packaging needed to produce MREs proved to be too complex to perform in a kitchen, she turned her attention to a simpler, more practical technology that accomplished the same goal – freeze drying.
Freeze-drying subjects frozen food to pressure, converting ice directly into a vapor without it passing through the “water phase.” In Chef T’s kitchen, the process is as simple as putting trays into a machine that fits on a countertop. A vacuum pump removes the water vapor, preserving all flavor and texture, as well as all of the food’s nutritional value. “You’re not destroying any of those micronutrients that are present in the food,” said Chef T. “All you’re losing is water.”
Freeze drying works with meals, not whole foods, she emphasized. “You want the food to be very small or sliced thin, because the more surface area you have, the faster it will dry.”
The result is a lightweight and remarkably shelf-stable product that requires only water to eat. In Kentucky, where Dare to Care is based and where water is a right, a person can bring a freeze-dried meal to a convenience store, add water from a hot water tap, crimp the top, and enjoy a high-quality, nutrient-dense, high-calorie meal five minutes later.
Chef T soon learned, however, that the process of freeze-drying meals was the easy part. A bigger challenge was the food safety controls and procedures Dare to Care’s kitchen would have to follow. All kitchens that serve the public have to adhere to a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) plan to ensure food safety. As Chef T soon realized, no one had ever created a HACCP plan for kitchens looking to prepare and distribute freeze-dried meals directly to the public. “There was no road map,” she said.
Chef T began calling local and state health departments, the USDA, and food science departments at universities across the country. “I literally had conversations with a NASA chef,” she said. “What don’t I know? What do I need to know? How do I measure it? Because I knew something had to be measured. I just didn’t know what.” For Chef T, who enjoys the nerdy side of cooking, “this was totally my jam.”
Ultimately, Chef T developed a standard operating procedure and HACCP plan and obtained approval through a food science lab to produce freeze-dried meals. To distribute those meals, though, she still had to find an agency to assume responsibility for inspecting her kitchen’s freeze-drying processes – an endeavor that’s taken her ten more months. The USDA recently agreed to perform the inspections; once the agency signs off, Dare to Care’s kitchen should be ready for action – subject, of course, to ongoing monitoring.
Chef T estimates she’s been pursuing her mission for almost three years, in addition to her “day job” of running her kitchen. The good news for other food banks and pantries interested in following in her footsteps is that she has blazed a path for them to follow. They’ll still have to work with their USDA regional office to ensure they’re in compliance and inspectable, she said, but once Dare to Care’s efforts are complete, she estimated a kitchen seeking to produce and distribute freeze-dried meals could be up and running in about six months.
Beyond the regulatory hurdles, the costs of freeze-drying food are relatively low. Today, Chef T’s kitchen can produce about 250 meals in a 24-hour period, using four countertop freeze dryers funded by a generous donor. Even so, Chef T’s already got her eye on a larger commercial unit to increase efficiency and get more freeze-dried meals into the community more quickly.
Once the USDA gives the all-clear, Dare to Care plans to focus on working with partner agencies to distribute its freeze-dried meals to unhoused neighbors. Long-term, however, the food bank plans to ensure its agencies have access to the meals in the event of a “small disaster,” such as a power outage, or in the event of a “major catastrophe,” such as tornadoes and flooding that have impacted Louisville in recent years.
For food banks considering freeze-dried meal production, having an HACCP-certified staff member is critical, Chef T said, as is engaging early with your regional USDA office. She also emphasized the importance of planning for growth from the beginning. “I feel like this could really take off and be beneficial to a huge number of people. And I think looking at and planning for the next step is only going to make that first step stronger.” – Amanda Jaffe
Amanda Jaffe is a writer and former attorney with a deep interest in organizations and mechanisms that address food insecurity. Her online publication, Age of Enlightenment, is available on Substack, and her essays and articles may be found at www.amandajaffewrites.com.
Photo credit, top: Dare to Care Food Bank
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