in thinking that eating food from supermarket skips is actually perfectly sane

[stripeymama]

and the insanity lies with supermarkets that throw away £18 billion worth of food every year??

I have been told that I am crazy for eating (and feeding dd) food that has been found on skips. And that its dangerous and could make us ill.

Well, it hasn't yet. We happily eat fruit, vegetables, cheese, bread, cakes, and biscuits from skips. Whole bags full of organic brocolli. Asparagus, mangos, peppers, baby corn, chocolate cheesecakes, fresh orange and passion fruit smoothies. On one memorable occasion, three binliners full of assorted cans of beer!

I avoid most animal products (we are vegetarian anyway) but when we still had a dog, he often got organic mince cooked for him, or fish and chicken breasts. We once found a tray of 24 cans of pedigree chum, thrown out because one can had leaked onto the others.

So I don't think there is anything wrong with freeganism, in fact I think there is a lot right with it, so to my exSIL who thinks I am negligent and likely to poison dd.

I did eat like this for a long time, obviously not fish or meat. Did have embarressing incident rummaging through boxes of veg behind a store when the owner came out and it turned out it was his delivery for the day, not the bins!! I was getting v excited by what a great haul I thought I'd found.
Once got a big bin bag of pink iced doughnuts out of a supermarket skip-yum, yum! This was twenty years ago however; I am now a very respectable Mum who of course pays far too much for things.

erm but do you ever see them wiping down conveyor belts in supermarkets? Chicken juice all over them...and then you plonk your fruit down and....

So MerryKerry, if you bought a chicken from Sainsburys, within its sell by date, as I did, and found that it was rank and rotting, would you still trust the sell-by date?

I think you need to be careful with sell-by dates with processed food, but for plain old meat/veg /cheese and so on you really can just use your common sense.

Out of date doesn't necessarily mean off, ffs - do you throw food out of your fridge because it's one day out? And besides, it's past the sell-by, not use-by dates. Meat is well packaged in supermarkets, and so unlikely to leak, esp as it'll probably only have been in there an hour or so.

Some supermarkets do have deals with homeless charities for excess food.

well I think it is marvelous of you stripey, it is such disgusting waste, supermarkets refuse to sell at rock bottom prices to their staff and prefer to sling it all out just incase the staff wait for the bargains too often. they should be made to give it away to the needy.
everyone knows that sell-by's are always too early. what is wrong with using your senses to tell you if the food is any good? I go by what it looks/feels/smells like tbh, I never just take the sell by as gospel, I can't stand waste.

Well I can see/smell if something is really not ok to eat. We buy food that sits at home until its out of date sometimes and we (as I'm sure most people do) eat that.

You just have to use your judgement.

I often have a look in skips but only usually find rubble!

Seriously though over the years we have retrieved 3 chairs (2 of them 'designer', in fact I'm sitting on one of them as I type!), a wooden toy kitchen, a Kettler tricycle, a butler sink and various other bits)

A mate of mine recently got hold of 2 fireplaces.

Good advice from Misdee's dh though.

Kerry, the sell by/best before date is not the use by date.

M&S are supposed to have the best bins.

i also tend to trust my nose when it comes to meat than the date on it.

i always sniff meat before i cook it, although if its off chicken you dont need to smell it because as soon as you take the packaging off your gag reflex kicks in and you puke.

We actually don't know for sure exactly what the food we buy in date from the supermarket may or may not have been contaminated with from the stories I've heard from folks who work at chicken packing plants about what goes on. Also heard stories from lads who used to work picking fruit for jams and how they used to get the weight up in their barrels because they were paid by weight-let's just say raspberry juice isn't the only juice that goes into making raspberry jam thanks to these cheeky/disgusting lads....(wee wee)

Even my mother has agreed its a Good Thing to do, after the time I gave her eight pats of organic butter (the day after its sell by date).

It is just one of those things that infuriates me about our society, that so many people seem to be more disgusted by the idea of eating this food than they are by the fact it has been thrown away in the first place!

Though it sounds like I'm going to be bumping into local MNers next time I am rummaging...

Sell by date's mean diddly. Years ago I used to work at a potato factory and I know for a fact that the same potatoes were used for countless sell by date's. It usually went M & S and Waitrose got the best potatoes and the earliest sell by dates, then Sainsburys , etc., etc till you got to Iceland at the end of the list..... I still to this day won't buy Iceland veg, I just can't help myself but I'd definitely eat M & S's throwaway's.....

never heard of this going on before - are there not any chance of rats around - even though the bins are emptied daily?

So this is a things lots of people do is it? Are you the only one there looking for food or have you got fellow rumagers with you??

Find this a bit strange TBH.

It has been on the news a bit over the last year, so I think its getting to be a bigger thing.

To me there is nothing strange about it - I've been doing it for nearly ten years and dd thinks its great.

Well each to their own and all that but it something I couldn't do myself. Sure you have saved a few £'s though over the year.....

Do you still have to do grocery shopping though? surely things like bleach & loo roll aren't conveniently dumped

bleach does get dumped. usually if a cap is loose or the bottle leaks slightly.

I worked in Asda when I was a student and the waste was horrendous. Occasionally, stuff would be given to old peoples homes etc. They used to pour fabric conditioner or similar over stuff in skips so tramps wouldn't nick it. I had a huge row, saying if these poor buggers were so hungry that they would steal stuff from a tip, then surely they should be allowed too. Didn't make any difference but I refused to pour anything on it.