This paper examines the practices and policies of food charity, from the COVID-19 emergency to the present, through the lens of the findings of the prevailing literature produced during the same period. Food charity – defined as the organised distribution of food to people in need through non-profit and/or voluntary initiatives – experienced a significant expansion during the period of the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, due to the associated increase in food insecurity. Subsequently, as the emergency phase came to a close, it experienced a process of consolidation within the broader framework of welfare provisions. Based on a systematic review of emerging scholarly literature, this paper identifies three key dynamics in that consolidation: the institutionalisation of food aid, the diversification of involved actors, and the persistence of tensions between emergency-driven interventions and structural approaches.