John Arnold van Hengel (February 21, 1923 – October 5, 2005) was a grassroots activist and entrepreneur credited as being the "Father of Food Banking".
He would later go on to create Feeding America, helping to spread the food banking concept across the United States, and eventually the rest of the world.
Spending time as a self-described "first-rate beach bum",[6] van Hengel moved on to study broadcasting at UCLA.
His odd jobs included driving a beer truck in Beverly Hills,[6] designing plastic rainwear, a sales manager for Bear Archery and a magazine publicist.
[10] John bought an old milk delivery truck for $150 and used it to gather gleaned citrus fruit and other foods to bring to the soup kitchen.
Inside stores John found less perishable throwaways such as dented cans and leaky bags of rice and sugar.
[7][14][15] Businesses were able to cut the costs of disposing unusable but edible food as well as taking tax breaks by helping multiple charities.
[3] John also helped establish food banks throughout Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, South America and Australia.