McDonald's restaurants may proudly boast “Over a Billion Served,” but the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) can say the same when it comes to pounds of food collected for the needy.

Since 1993 the NALC has collected more than one billion pounds of food through its annual nationwide event, "Stamp Out Hunger" – America’s largest single-day food drive.

This Saturday, more than 1,500 NALC branches from every state, involving more than 10,000 cities and towns, will have more than 230,000 letter carriers collect non-perishable goods from people’s mailboxes. Here in Lake Zurich, carriers will be collecting food for the St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry at St. Francis de Sales parish.

Last year, Lake Zurich residents contributed about 1,600 pounds of food to the 77.1 billion collected nationwide, according to Jill Hower, delivery supervisor at the Lake Zurich Post Office.

Campbell's, a long supporter of the drive, will donate one pound of food (up to one million pounds) to Feeding America for every person who joins the Stamp Out Hunger Facebook community. Additionally, you can join Stamp Out Hunger on Twitter to follow the national collection online as food is gathered this Saturday. 

Residents can leave non-perishable food in bags next to mailboxes if donations exceed the mailbox size. Hower said when the food is delivered to the St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry, local Boy Scouts will be on-hand to unload the mail trucks.

According to the NALC, the need for donations is greater than ever. The organization stated, “According to the Agriculture Department's most recent study of food security in the United States in 2009, the number of Americans living in so-called 'food insecure' homes topped 50 million. Of those, 17.2 million are children.”