Organic Soup Kitchen needs to be in Every City in America. What is in its Way?

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Is there a more benevolent act that we could do for low-income cancer patients than delivering them free, homemade organic soup?

Equally as important is that the person bringing these cancer patients the soup is often their only interaction with other people during the week, as loneliness is a major issue, exacerbating whatever physical illness is ravaging through their bodies.

This is precisely the work of Organic Soup Kitchen, a Santa Barbara-based non-profit whose mission is to support the health of cancer survivors, low-income seniors and those with chronic illness through its wide selection of metabolic oncology SoupMeals, each carefully crafted with 10-20 organic, medicinal-quality ingredients.

Given its impact and use of pesticide-free products — something essential for individuals afflicted with cancer — one would imagine that foundations that typically fund food banks and similar food-related non-profit organizations would be lined up to help grow Organic Soup Kitchen.

Unfortunately, that has been anything but the case, largely because of the institutional resistance to “organic.”

IT STARTED IN A LOCAL PARK

A successful entrepreneur in the publishing industry, executive director Anthony Carroccio and his chief operating officer, Andrea Slaby, launched this non-profit in 2009, wanting to help those struggling to make ends meet.

What started off as serving organic soup in the local park, the operation soon moved into the Veterans’ Building in Santa Barbara, and it began to roast turkeys for those in need during Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Within a short period of time, word of these fresh cooked organic meals began to spread, and the organization received a call from an oncologist at the nearby hospital. He asked if the organization could blend one of its soups for a patient who suffered from dysphagia, which made it difficult to swallow. Helping this one individual soon led to the creation of its Cancer and Chronic Illness Recovery Program, with the non-profit working closely with physicians to develop recipes.

Now staffed with five employees and 50 volunteers, the Organic Soup Kitchen has served over one million nutrient-dense SoupMeals to residents in Santa Barbara County and beyond. The process of reaching its current scale and capacity required the organization to become extremely proficient at both supply chain and manufacturing, as it must manage an inventory of dozens of highly perishable organic products. This expertise also allowed it to become a social enterprise, where any individual can purchase soup and the net profits are funneled back into the organization.

PUSHBACK ON ORGANIC

Organic Soup Kitchen is using dozens of the highest quality organic ingredients in each SoupMeal, all with the goal of building the immune system, lowering inflammation and promoting healing. Furthermore, they contain no added sugar, preservatives or fillers. This refusal to compromise on quality while maintaining an affordable price point for shoppers (the paying customers) means the margins on these soups are very thin.

So, this 501(c)(3) organization relies on outside funding, from both individuals and foundations.

However, presenting in front of institutions has been met with a good deal of resistance.

“The whole non-profit world is not about organic,” said Anthony Carroccio. “These people at the foundations who are disbursing large amounts of money say, ‘Why are you feeding them organic?’ They do not understand that individuals are going to get healed with food that is organic and contains good fats, and they cannot make the connection between tasting good and feeding the microbiome.”

“For the food banks and similar organizations, it is a numbers game — how many people you feed and what it costs. The person next door who is serving bologna sandwiches would get more money because he is serving more people and has higher numbers.”

Given the incredible work that Organic Soup Kitchen is doing, this model should be replicated in every city in the country.

But the effort to make this a viable entity, even with Anthony Carroccio’s willingness to train any interested party, is enormous.

Furthermore, the pushback that it has received from foundations, an important source of funding for organizations such as these, reinforces an unfortunate mindset that pervades the majority of our schools and hospitals, as well as society at large.

Organic food — and its higher cost — is not broadly viewed as an imperative when it comes to feeding our bodies and allowing it to perform at an optimum level.

We are stuck in the paradigm that food must be cheap and that having it sprayed with poisonous chemicals is perfectly acceptable.

The question we need to be asking the people at the foundations is if they had family members who were sick with cancer, what kind of food would they want them eating: nutritious, made-from-scratch organic soup or something pesticide-laden, factory-farmed and ultra-processed?

Organic Soup Kitchen knows the answer, which is why it is uncompromising in serving only homemade meals that begin and end with organic.

(On the left, executive director Anthony Carroccio, and on the right, chief operating officer Andrea Slaby)

(A customer being delivered soup at her home)

(A staff member in the Organic Soup Kitchen)

(Tuscan white bean and kale soup)

(Mushroom and kale soup)

(Coconut curry lentil soup)

With gratitude, Max Goldberg, Founder