[5] In the mid-1960s, during rehabilitation in Phoenix, Arizona, after a paralyzing injury, John van Hengel began volunteering at a local soup kitchen.

Around this time, one of the clients told him that she regularly fed her children with discarded items from a grocery store garbage dumpster.

Van Hengel began to actively solicit unwanted food from grocery stores, local gardens, and nearby citrus groves.

In 2005, Feeding America began using an internal market with a synthetic currency called "shares" to more rationally allocate food.

[12] In August 2009, Columbia Records announced that all U.S. royalties from Bob Dylan's album Christmas in the Heart would be donated to Feeding America, in perpetuity.

[14] In September, they launched Hunger Action Month, with events planned all over the nation, to raise awareness and get more U.S. Americans involved in helping out.

[15][16][17] In 2015, Feeding America saved more than 2 billion pounds (~907 thousand metric tons) of food that would have been thrown away otherwise, but could instead be distributed to hungry families.

According to Patti Habeck, the President of Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin, the number of people increased by 36% at the height of the pandemic and had not yet decreased until autumn of 2021.

Top providers of grocery products include 7-Eleven, Amazon, Costco, CVS Health, General Mills, Kraft Heinz, Sam's Club, Target Corporation, Trader Joe's, and Walmart.