Getting food to Haiti...

Jennifer Ward at the Atlantic Monthly's Food Channel writes an important article about getting food aid to the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, which as you know was devastated by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake earlier this week - an earthquake that has made things so bad that aid of any and all kinds is almost impossible to deliver to those who need it. One of the best things to send: high-energy bars.

"These are times when it's about just giving people enough to get by," Jennifer Parmelee, the WFP's public affairs officer, told the Atlantic Food Channel. She called the biscuits "literally an energy lifeline," not really equivalent to what most would think of as a meal.

The biscuits are the most appropriate food for responding to crisis because they are individually packaged and don't need to be mixed with water. Even where food is available, the devastation has left few facilities in which to prepare it. The WFP last used the biscuits in the Philippines to feed hundreds of thousands of people displaced by 2009's severe floods.

Ward provides links in her article if you want to get food aid to Port-au-Prince and other parts of Haiti.