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.

"This is'nt just a Marks and Spencers Salmon En Croute,it's free"

This has to be the weirdest thing I think I've ever read on here.

rofl sunflower

Fareshare do this. The website explains how it works (and that no food is eaten or given to ayone past its sell by date).

Still not sure why anyone thinks using good food is weirder than throwing it away.

not weird at all.

good luck with it.

i thought of you today when i was doing the shopping. was wondering how much i could've found the skip

An ex boyfriend of mine once drove a skip lorry for a company who had a contract with M&S.

He was a bastard, but I stayed with him for the lobster thermidore and sundry little crumpled packets of deliciousness that weren't even past their sell-by date most of the time!

I did this a lot whilst single and travelling in europe- I would feel uncomfortable feeding my dc food from skips though, tbh.

I may be niave but I have never heard of people (other than tramps/homeless people) rummaging in skips for food.

If your'e gonna rummage cause you are so against it being thrown away donat it to a local soup kitchen - give it to the needy.

YOu can afford to buy it.

Been looking at that Freegan website and I can not beleive what they are advocating.

A lot of food that is binned by the supermarkets is edible.

There is a difference between 'Best Before' and 'Use By/Display Until' dates.

A 'Best Before' date is applied to foods that is unlikely to make you ill if it is old and applies to most ambient groceries. It is just a guide to when the food will be at its best. It is not illegal to sell foods past their 'Best Before' dates - but it is regarded as bad practice and all major supermarket chains will bin foods that pass this date after attempting to sell them at a discounted rate.

A 'Use By/Display Until' code is used on fresh products that could possibly result in severe deterioration of the product that alters it taste and texture dramatically and could give illness to the consumer if eaten past this date due to the normally harmless bacteria reaching levels that would make you ill. This is a legal requirement and is punishable by fines of found to be flouting.
Foods covered by this will be mainly dairy and meat products.

Items such as fruit and veg can be eaten well past their dates - as i am sure most of us do in our fridges regularly.

I would not recommend eating open food from a skip because of the risk of contamination from other foods that would have had a dangerous build up of bacteria due to the warm environment and the length of time they may have been there. The skips would also not be cleaned regularly so would contain all sorts of nasties.

Packaged food or food with a 'Best Before' date would be ok i guess.

Most major supermarkets will keep their skips locked anyway as this is a pest-control policy to discourage pests from harbouring close to the stores.

LOL Northerner, some of us even buy our clothes in OXFAM! AND we don't always wash them before we wear them...people might have died in them, or worse still, had LICE

EricL, I have no problem eating food past it's sell by date if it's in my fridge and I judge it to be okay but rummaging through skips for my dc's food just goes against instinct for me.

Can I just ask stripey,when was the last time you did this and what did you get exactly? Good on you!

When we were kids/teens co-op had skips next to the park we use to go to and we used to have a feast crisps, chocolate, coke, beer it was great

Really enjoyed reading this thread!

I used to help out at a homeless shelter in London, and we had an arrangement with M&S to collect all of their throwaway stuff two minutes before midnight, before it went out of date. We had some wonderful mixed bags, but had to agree to take everything, so the shelter was occasionally resplendent with vases/milk bottle fulls of carnation on every window sill, as they were part of the grocery section!

And as for the waste from restaurants, well, don't get me started!! I stopped eating out on principle for ages afterwards.

manchita, that's not instinct, it's conditioning.

Stripey

Many thanks for reminding me about this appalling waste of food perpetuated by the filthy scum that are the supermarkets.

They rip us all off, bankrupt farmers / producers, and then have the nerve to bin perfectly good food.

I spent 6 months living and working on Tresco a few years ago, and fed myself almost exclusively from the skip outside the shop there.

Unfortunately for far too long I have lived too far from any supermarkets to take advantage of this fantastic free source of food, but now I am in civilised areas again I shall be having a look.

Well done you, and yoy set an example everyone should be proud to follow.

Northerner - why do you believe that it is good for supermarkets to make excessive profits by selling food at overinflated prices?

MerryKerryXmas - tinned food is brilliant! If the dented tin is not holed then it is fine. If it is holed best not eaten. As to dates on cans, my family used to run a grocers. When we bought the shop there was a lot of ancient stock. Including a complete case of baked beans produced by the Star food company of the USA. When we contacted them they asked us to send the cans to them. Turned out the beans had been produced in 1946, and when we returned them they sampled a tin and they were perfect. In 1981!

Why are people happy to slate the supermarkets for their domination of local businesses etc and still take produce (free or not) from them?

Because using the waste that they produce lessens their impact on the environment.

Because they have trampled on any local competition, of course, binkleandflip