They are organized and have websites and forums where they post and discuss how to find the good garbage. And yes, they all say it's fun. But, then again, some people cut off their testicles and call it fun, too.

Sounds good to me. A lot of good food is wasted.

This is part of the reason many grocery stores and restaurants spray all of their garbage with a dilute bleach solution, or other noxious materials. I put tile cleaner or the like into my own trash bags, to cut back on the number of times the "street pioneers" open the bag to grab old food.

There's probably some enterprising medical researcher out there who's going to get a great study off of how many of these people get sick or die from their very stupid habit.

Where I live, produce and food left over at the end of the day at resturants and cafes gets picked up by various volunteer organisations and distributed to shelters, missions, charity, etc. It's very organized.

But when I think of dumpster diving, I think of Charlie Manson and the Manson Family. And I call ewww.

Rocketboom has video of the freegans.

The freegan philosophy of “ethical eating”

I'm trying to remember ... didn't we used to have other names for this?

Times of London, the Scotsman, the BBC. The story has been all over the UK today. Radio 4 even interviewed a few of them. This is a whole industry for British journalists: finding crazy yanks doing the wierdest shit and pretending it's common. The affect this has on British public opinion is quite real. Try protesting that it's crap and you get, "but they interviewed one of them. I heard it!"

I don't know what the average Brit thinks, but the above average Brit (because he reads newspapers) thinks we spend our days speaking in tongues and gunning each other down in the streets between dumpster dives.

This has been getting a fair amount of play over here too which suggests a sophisticated media campaign is in place. In fact I found one of those "anti-everything" organizations (Wetlands Preserve) to be a sponsor of a major Freegan site.

And yes, they take Paypal.

Please, Weasel. I have eaten in England many times and given the choice of a life of British fine cooking or the dumpster, give me a ladder and a bib.

As for Scotland, one word, haggis.

Don't diss British food. Just like our dentition, it's a lot better than you gringos think (and you fuckers invented the corn dog, so don't start). And I am definitely taking that advice about spraying bleach in my garbage before tossing it. We don't have too many dipshit freegans hanging round my apartment (the guards would beat them senseless at the bare minimum and execute them if they got feisty) but we do have a raccoon problem.

(and you fuckers invented the corn dog, so don't start)

Seriously, if you're going to dis American cuisine, pick on something out of California. But corn dogs? Food of the gods, man.

As for the freegans, I'd like to think that our already scandalously poor education system would boot a teacher who advocates eating garbage, but you know, I'm not all that surprised.

Gillies: don't go there, man. Four words: Mister Brain's Frozen Faggots.

Yeah, and if I have to, I'm prepared to describe omelette-in-a-can. I love you guys. Don't force my hand.

I'm, frankly, still a little gob-smacked that anyone could think that dipping a hot dog in batter and then deep frying it to a cripsy golden brown was a bad idea.

What's next... onion rings?

mmmmm. . . Corn Dog

I'm with David -- the bad rep of British food is unwarranted today. Their are lots of world-class meals to be had there, from renowned London restaurants to little places in the Lake Country.

Plus, you can always stop at any random pub for a ploughman's lunch. Pickles, fresh bread, big slab of Stilton, salad, and so forth . Great beer, great food.

Plus, the English breakfast is an exercise in gluttony that ought not to be missed. Best experienced in a B&B served family style. It's sort of like a big American breakfast, but invariably includes fried tomatoes, baked beans, and cheese.

Giving you a good excuse to skip the ploughman's lunch, but you won't.

Wow. Just...wow.

All the other true crime fanatics out there should be remembering now, as I am, that Charles Manson's girls were infamous for their "garbage runs." Manson forced all his followers to be vegetarian and they would go through dumpsters behind grocery stores in Hollywood to get food for all their crew. This was their way of rebelling against The Man, don't you know.

So not only is this new wave of dumpster-diving civilization-phobic enviro-weenies nasty, they're not even original.

Agreed, Michael. Most of all, I give props to the Brits for their sandwiches. I spent a few days in London once, and the sandwiches I had were true works of art. They actually went to the effort of balancing out all the different flavors and textures. A treat for the mouth indeed.

They were also catered, and monumentally expensive, but hey...

Just so everyone knows, I went out and had some corn dogs for lunch.

The best corn dogs are the ones they serve at the county fairs, by the BBQ tri-tip sandwhich stand.

Not that I go to county fairs or anything.

How can you complain about British cuisine when you can simply live off Guinness?

"Just like our dentition, it's a lot better than you gringos think"

Actually, British dentition is even worse than we gringos think it is. You can always spot a British male by the gaps.

PS A joke that may have already been told here -

A man was found having sex with a mannequin. His defense? He thought she was British.

Brilliant!

Omelette. In. A. Can.

Channel surfing and caught these whackjobs in the C block of some news show. Initially thought "Comedy Channel". These folks need to find a library card in a dumpster, check out a book on hobbies, pick one, pursue.

Regarding the "freegans"... they are just like everyone else who embraces these leftist ideas...

“I have pity for people who have not figured out this lifestyle,” [said some hippy]

God, I hate hippies. If they would just admit that they are lazy and at least slightly stupid I could sympathize more. The most frightening thing about the story is that one of these mental midgets is a school teacher.

You know what? You really can find a lot of free food in a dumpster.

BTW, have you visited a dumpster lately? What kind of a fucking filthy animal would go rummaging there for FOOD, if not a rodent or some dirty bird?

Can you actually imagine braving the stench of hot, fermenting garbage juice, to get some heads of lettuce and castoff fruit?

FOR THE LOVE OF PETE.

And they think WE'RE stupid.
Yeah.

“I have pity for people who have not figured out this lifestyle,”

Indeed, this idiot fails to realize that for every freegan there must be a substantial number of other people throwing out still edible food.

This reminds me of Rob 'Meathead' Reiner's recent hissy fit. First, he organized a new tax on cigarettes in California to finance pre-school programs. This came about because Reiner had a new set of children in late middle-age as a ultra-wealthy film director who could afford to take as much off to play Dad as he chose but now he felt guilty for not having been superdad for his first set of now adult kids. And because smokers are inherently bad people, rather than Reiner cutting a check to assuage his guilty conscience, he got a tax on the smokers so he could feel good at no significant cost to himself.

But now a new tobacco tax has been proposed that would add still more to the cost of a pack. Reiner is upset because this is supposedly enough to drive smokers to quit in large numbers and cause a severe shortfall in the expected tax revenues. So, apparently in Meathead's world it's OK to exploit drug addicts but not to give them a major inducement to give up the habit.

Notice how the "freegans" put down the waste of the "capitalist system" but one guy spends all the money he saves on his food bill on all sorts of consumer goods, vacations, etc.! So this proves that capitalism is not wasteful. Even our garbage gets eaten! And these freegans, to their chagrin, must be master capitalists, finding an undervalued resource that they can exploit at a profit to buy more cool consumer goods!

Guinness is Irish, not British.

Guinness is Irish, not British.

I knew someone would quibble over that.

Not to defend the loons, but they don't expect everyone to adopt their way of doing things. It's their way of living in a capitalist world until the progressive revolution comes by only eating the waste and not creating any demand for more. What they'd actually like is to see all the animals set free and everyone living off of the bean sprouts and fungus grown in their own shitty patches of mud on a commune when the rest of humanity wakes up and gets ethical.

In the meantime it's okay for them to eat leftover cat food made up from poor ground up animals because, hey, it would go to waste otherwise.

Let it be known that eating crap out of a dumpster is a preferable lifestyle over actually being a regular vegan hippie asshole.

Because then you can still eat corn dogs, if you find enough of one left on the stick.

Guess who's going to pay the medical bills when the freegans get sick from living in and eating garbage?

The fine art of dumpster dinning did they find any dead animals left by PETA?