There was no spud left unturned as Calgary city councillors gathered together in what’s become the annual launch of the holiday food bank challenge.

Councillors from most of the wards, along with their staff, members of the Calgary Police Service and the media, competed in the first leg of the challenge, which saw them bag potatoes on Dec. 8.  They’re vying for the coveted Golden Lettuce award, current held (for three years) by Ward 5 Coun. Raj Dhaliwal.

It’s all a part of the Mayor’s Annual Food Bank Challenge, which, under former Mayor Jyoti Gondek, morphed into a city council competition.

The potato bags will be handed out to Calgary families in need who come to pick up their food hampers in the coming days. It’s a need that continues to grow, said Calgary Food Bank CEO Melissa From.

She said that they’re serving 800 families per day across Calgary.

“When I started at the Calgary Food Bank two and a half years ago, we were serving 400 households a day, and we’ve just had to increase, increase, increase,” she said.  

“The reality is, we’ll be opening our new location downtown in a couple of days, and that will add another 200 head count to the number of households we’re serving every.”

From said the downtown location is going to help make food accessible to more people in the city.

“What we recognize is that after 43 years of our existence here in the city, the city has grown significantly in population and in geography, and having a single location in one part of the city leaves us no longer accessible to everyone,” she said.

“Folks in Panorama Hills, riding the bus for three hours and multiple transfers to get to this location, it’s just simply not feasible for a lot of households.”

From said that potato challenge is appropriate, because every family goes home with a bag of potatoes when they come to the food bank.

“Potatoes are something that actually is used in a lot of different cultural diets and cultural foods, and so it has a lot of different purposes,” she said.

“It’s also a staple item. It’s a filler item. It’s substantial, and so our clients all have potatoes as part of their diet.”

The potatoes being bagged by the councillors were from Phoenix Farms in southern Alberta. They donate more than a million pounds of potatoes to help the Calgary Food Bank.

Helping raise awareness

Ward 6 Coun. John Pantazopoulos had his ward team all starched up and ready to roll, collecting and bagging 880 pounds of spuds to win the event.

“When you see your elected officials and the staff from city hall coming out and actually going right into the community, to the charities that are as local as you get, the Calgary Food Bank, and just to bring that awareness, that’s something that we have the power of,” he said.

While the councillor was very methodical, stacking larger potatoes with small potato fillers, his team urged him just to fill the bags as quickly as possible. Their furious effort helped power the team to a win.

“I fortunately have very competitive staff members, which is fantastic,” he said.

“We started to get the big potatoes first and sort of build-up and just get moving. You kind of get in your own little mojo and your own little system. So, it worked pretty good.”

Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas said that it was great to inherit the tradition from former Mayor Gondek.

“It’s a good reminder that this isn’t just needed here during Christmas and the holiday season, but year-round,” said Farkas.

“So, it’s amazing as a team building exercise, but also to be able to see firsthand the importance of programs like this and you get a really good idea who needs food.”

Farkas said being in the warehouse seeing the logistics and scale of the operation was important for all members of council.

“We understand there’s upwards of a 20 day wait period to be able to get access to these services. So as Calgarians, we have to step up with our volunteerism,” he said.

“We have to step up with our donations to make sure that more and more Calgarians have access to safe and affordable food.”