New York Giants Players Unload an 18-Wheeler as Stop & Shop Donates 1500 Thanksgiving Turkeys to Community FoodBank of New Jersey

Running back Rashad Jennings led a group of New York Giants Football players who unloaded an 18-wheeler, as Stop & Shop donated 1500 Thanksgiving Turkeys to the Community FoodBank of New Jersey. Jennings was joined by teammates Quintin Demps and Victor Hampton.

Stop & Shop’s Turkey Express program will deliver nearly 21,000 turkeys to hunger relief organizations in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island this holiday season.

Hunger remains a very real problem in New Jersey with more families forced to make donated food an ongoing, basic part of their plan to make ends meet. More people are coming more often to pantries and other feeding programs because they are forced to use their ever-eroding resources to pay for other critical needs such as housing, transportation and medicine, with little or nothing left over for food. Almost 900,000 people in New Jersey rely on food banks, and 7.7 million times a year, someone in need is fed by a food bank partner charity.

· Almost 400,000 children in New Jersey (nearly 1 in 5) are food insecure.

· A great many families rely on public and private assistance to help feed their children, utilizing resources including school breakfasts and lunches, after-school meals, summer feeding programs, BackPack and Kids Cafe programs and other food provided by the Community FoodBank of New Jersey and its partner charities.

· 77% said they had to choose between paying for utilities or food.

· 73% chose between medicine and food.

· 70% chose between housing and food.

· 61% chose between transportation and food.

· 35% chose between education and food.

· 75% said they purchased inexpensive, unhealthy food as a way to cope.

· 57% had a household member with high blood pressure.

· 28% had a household member with diabetes.

Stop & Shop donates over $12 million in product and financial support to individual food banks. In addition to the Turkey Express program, Stop & Shop continues to fight hunger through the Food for Friends campaign, which will raise more than $1 million this year for more than 300 local hunger relief organizations through the states that it operates in.