Freegans

I thought this was very interesting.
A couple relevent quotes:
"The lifestyle involves salvaging discarded, unspoiled food from supermarket dumpsters, known as 'dumpster diving'"

"At one point, it defines freeganism as "an anti-consumeristic ethic about eating" but goes on to describe practices including dumpster diving, plate scraping, wild foraging, gardening, theft, employee scams, and barter as alternatives to paying for food."

Blast, your classes cater to freegans!

What,no begging? What ever happened to the old fashioned ways?

Thankfully, I don't think Blast teaches the Freegans about "theft" and "employee scams".

Seriously, after I read the article, I began to think that there is a fine line between being a "freegan" and being a "freeloader". When one engages in theft, squatting or scams then I believe a moral line is crossed. It's sort of taking advantage of the charity of others.

How nice that they can dine so divinely freely on the refuse of the materialistic greedy masses.

So long as they aren't making a mess, stealing or burdening the health care system with uninsured food poisoning cases, then I suppose it's fine.

I already can't put my garbage out the night before pickup for fear that that some bum or ID thief is going to rummage through the bags and make a mess.

Life in the big city.

At all the restaruants I've worked at, whatever the employees didn't want to take home was thrown away every night per store policy. Literally garbage bags filled with gourmet food in perfect condition. Catering companies are the same way. Trays of untouched food, even cases of expensive alcohol, tossed after the event.

Why would they toss cases of alcohol it's not like it would go bad ???

Food I can see... but alcohol, soda, wine, etc ??? Never heard that before.

I've heard that different charitable groups, such as Second Harvest ( Second Harvest Food Rescue ), collect uneaten food from various restaurants and retailers rather letting get trashed. The food bank where I volunteer also picks up uncooked, still-frozen meals (like fried chicken, mashed potatoes, small pizzas) from local restaurants for us to pass out.

My grandparents lived through the Great Depression and drilled into us the lesson of not wasting food. The amound of food we throw out in the US (individually and collectively) is appalling.

The definition of "Freeganism" at that wiki described it as being "anti consumerist" and some of it is just that. However, part of it, essentially scavenging and dumpster diving relies entirely on the bad consumer practices of others to provide for one's self. If there were no consumer waste for them to scavenge they would have to join the regular consumers. It's silliness to say it's anti consumerist.

Having said that, I love a good dumpster dive find and think wild food foraging and urban gardening practices are great. There are also some other good practices in that wiki.

I have worked at places that threw away alcohol that had gone out of date. As soon as they could the cooks retrieved the alcohol. And then consumed it to no ill effects other than a few hang-overs. I worked at a popular buffet/steakhouse where we were required to throw away staggering amounts of food. I spoke to the General Manager about possibly donating or doing something with it, her reply was she could not due to corporate policy. If the company allowed the food to be consumed when it was no longer ok to serve to customers, and someone became ill they (company) was liable. Its a waste, but I can understand why they would not allow it. It seems maybe a waiver needs to be signed?

I've never heard that term.

For some reason, there are laws about restaurants having to throw out certain food items - whethere cooked, left-over, returned by the customer, etc...

Kind of funny, but a town I lived in back in Missouri had an annual "dumpster diving" day, when folks would take their unwanted stuff to the street side, and anyone that wanted it could take it. Usually didn't just last a day, but everyone turned a blind eye to the several-day "city wide yard sale."