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.

Nah. I have no shame

I think people react indignantly to this because

a) as fully conditioned members of a capitalist bourgeoisie, we tend to have a vague subcutaneous conviction that "something for nothing" is intrinsically immoral - there's no reason why that should be the case, but we make better economic units if we internalise it and enforce it upon ourselves and one another, and

b)people actually having the wit, initiative and chutzpah to sidestep the capitalist machine and get 'something for nothing' shows the rest of us up for the dull-witted TV-sated fat-bottomed uber-consumers we really are.

I find the whole idea refreshing and encouraging, and the outraged Upright Citizens getting all uptight about it....just make it even more fun.

It could be anything!! It ranges from a missing ingredient to the potential that the product has been contaminated in some way (usually during production) with some sort of harmful bacteria. The store will get an email to inform them that they need to remove these products immediately and destroy them. It doesn't bother me in principle because some of it just a terrible waste of good food but I just don't think it's safe if you don't know the reasons for throwing the stuff out.

Oooh Greensleeves you are more articulate than me! I just sort of go 'capitalism bollox kershmeuurr' when put on the spot.

But I do think people get very het up about the idea that someone else is 'getting something for nothing' - it shows up in all sorts of debates (refugee/asylum seekers, travellers, single mums). We are all free to make these choices....

I agree avi...sometimes I think these people would be much more at peace if they just went the whole hog and had themselves laminated

very rarely does a recall of food items happen. i remeber about 4 in my six years of working for safeway. more often it was non-food items that got recalled.

all items recalled are advertised on front of store or media generally as recalled.

I don't mean choices in relation to asylum seekers/single motherhood btw.

I mean regarding less consumption and more 'scavenging'

Aviatrix - have not been here so very long and always been stripeymama. Is there another resident skip-rat???

But Kerry, in both of those examples the food wasn't thrown out, they were selling it on. The mushrooms ended up in your fridge. So in fact that day you were at more risk than the skiprats

Of course a missing ingredient would be fine, and as I've already stated I agree with it in principle!
Midsee, I have to disagree with you on that as it happens much more freqently than you might expect

Food recalls are publicised for that very reason. When the dioxin scare (eggs) was going on, we didn't take stuff that had obviusly been thrown out for that reason (ie, binliners full of cheap cakes)

Greensleeves, I didn't understand a word you said, but it sounds marvellous (your post of 20.02)

to quote Tony Hancock