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Dumpster Diving

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Kai:
I used to work for a small little cafe that served your general variety of breakfast foodstuffs--eggs and sausage and pancakes and the like.

I am just going to say that I was astounded at how much food people waste. It's obscene.

Eat the doughnut.

Barmymoo:
RedLion, although I do see the flaws in capitalism I also see the flaws in communism. And I'm not going to start trying to bring about a revolution, I've seen where that gets people.

It's a tricky issue I guess, waste in general but food in particular especially when we're having a bit of a crisis about it at the moment (all those hungry chinese, doncha know? Or so teh interwubs tells me). Yes, our economic system does result in a lot of poverty, but I can't think of a feasible way to solve that problem without a whole host of other problems coming along that would result in just as many people dying.

Eating the food other people has wasted instead of eating new food is probably similar to using the back of sheets of paper, instead of using a clean sheet (something I always try and get people to do, I hate it when people only use one side of the paper). But it would be better if people just didn't waste it in the first place. Obviously you can't do anything about that.

So I think what I'm trying to say is that I don't know. Can't call it. Wouldn't know what to do if I was in the same situation.

RedLion:
I was teasing, friend-o. I actually agree with you completely.

Barmymoo:
I thought you probably were but I'm having a serious-conversation evening :-p

Elizzybeth:
I generally live by the principal that my body is not a trash can.  I try to buy and prepare only amounts of food that I am going to eat, and I save and eat leftovers whenever possible, but the fact is that nobody is going to be well served by me eating beyond the point at which I am full.  In the first world, people are not going hungry because there is a food shortage.  As Barmymoo points out, supermarkets and restaurants throw away huge amounts of food.  Eating the food that they throw out versus eating the food they serve within the restaurant is not going to decrease the ultimate amount of waste (same thing goes for smaller amounts of food thrown out by individual people).

If it's simply a matter of guilt for your privilege, then it does sound pretty silly to me.  You risk all kinds of infectious diseases for the sake of a couple of bucks and an inexplicably cleaner conscience (though you could, theoretically, give that money to a homeless shelter or something).

On the other hand, if it's a matter of you being hungry, the food being there, and you not minding eating something that's come out of a trash can, then go for it, by all means.  Otherwise it probably will simply go to waste.  I can see how someone could argue that it's bad for the economy, but only slightly, and certainly no more so than, say, growing your own fruits and vegetables at home for private consumption; I don't see how someone could reasonably argue that it's immoral.

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