Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Foot, I still love you and owe GlueGun a treat because I messed up Halloween. (The shame!) Anyone else think that Judge Footface totally needs to go into syndication?

I thought you were mad at me about that Halloween business and my I-was-trying-really-hard-to-be-reasonable-PMs!

Yeah, but my dad fed me garbage.

Vantine... instead of ignoring you, I'm being nicer than I should and instead redirecting you to this post and the links within.

Not guilty. I never said anything about procuring food being easy, for anybody (poor, homeless, freegan, or otherwise). But I do like nature trails.

The thread is a discussion about what's more ethical, veganism or freeganism. I find employee scams, theft, and feeding dumpstered food and plate scrapings to children to be unethical. Therefore, in my opinion, freeganism could not be more ethical than veganism, though I think other aspects of freeganism that involve sustainable practices are very ethical.

Homelessness has nothing to do with it, except that it's the only factor which I accept might justify feeding dumpstered food to children, but only if all other options were impossible. However, the consensus of the community was that homeless people don't eat out of dumpsters, let alone feed dumpstered food to their homeless children, precisely because there are other options. (Some people disagree with this consensus. Perhaps Vantine, who has been asked to clarify their position, but has yet to do so. Some people also misunderstood or misrepresented the things I wrote regarding homelessness. You can ignore all that and still be able to follow the thread, and in fact, that just might make it even easier than being poor and procuring food!)

I <3 Lubbock Babes 4 EVA

Right!
But wait.
Am I really the only one arguing that it's not right to give kids dumpstered food? That is, am I the only one who thinks that?

Maybe eating garbage was what made me the vegan I am today.

Re: feeding kids dumpstered food...

I guess to that I'd ask if you've ever had no money and been really hungry.

You don't even need to be really hungry. I've been that person throwing away a perfectly good bag of cheez-its that I got on a plane. I wouldn't blame anyone that picked that shiitake out of the trash, perfectly good cheez-its if you're into cheez-its.

No! I have personal dramaz that kept me from doing much in October and November! But I'm back!!! I will send him junk food and instructions not to share with you unless you are nice to him!!!!!
Judge Footface

I see kids (middle/high school) pick up food from the ground outside my library and eat it all the time. Sad, sad, sad.

is it on a dare? i've done this on a dare. i also ate dirt and sand when i was little, and sometimes played in the toilet. and i am strong like bull. so maybe this "kids' food should be clean" business is all backward.

new subnick

Nope. It's kids who are hungry. I know most of them. Welcome to urban librarianship, leave your expectations at the door.

This one time, I spilled some soup on my carpet. And then I tried to scrape it back in the bowl. I mean, it was leek and potato for goodness sake!

But then I've also seen kids eat slugs... so an expired can of peaches doesn't really register.

Well, now I feel bad for being a bit facetious.

Older kids/teenagers/middle schoolers/high schoolers/etc. are capable of deciding for themselves whether or not to eat discarded food. They're not "children" in the sense of the word that I think we're talking about, or at least, what I mean when expressing concerns about freegan parents feeding their kids from dumpsters/used plates/trash cans/litter/etc.

The new thing is to get into a fight, have someone video record it and then post that on YouTube. Then you sit in the library and watch it with your friends. This is break up the monotony of looking for your friends and family members on the county mug shot database.

Smaller kids may do it when they are being escorted by their big brothers/sisters/cousins. Most younger children are brought to the library by their parents so that pretty much prevent them from eating off the ground.

Teens and tweens are certainly still children. (Sorry if I offended the PPKulters...)

You've raised a lot of interesting questions and I'm genuinely not nitpicking you, but here's my thought- parents make all kinds of choices for their kids. My parents gave me McDonalds almost every day of my childhood. I wish they would have dumpstered some decent food for me! Parenting is a very personal decision; parents decide what religion, philosophy, values, etc that their kids will be raised with, and parents decide what their kids eat. I'd be more apt to high five a freegan parent than one that is buying into the big meat machine and feeding their kids factory farmed Frankenfood.

i think there is a huge difference between providing your kids with perfectly good, healthy food that happened to come from a dumpster and making your kids eat trash or people's half-eaten food. when your only means to get decent produce or organic food for your kids is to dumpster dive, i don't see how that is unethical.

Sure. But I think there are better options than those two.

I agree. I just don't see that scenario as probable.

There really is. I've never personally dumpster dived, but I've seen pictures of the things others have on here and I wouldn't hesitate to eat anything I've seen. Some things are more dumpsterable than others. Sealed bags of bagels, clif bars still in their wrappers, bananas, oranges ...there's really no harm in eating those things. Something like a pot pie, while maybe the person made a lot of effort to put it in multiple bags, are probably not the first things divers go after because it's a forking pie in a dumpster.

Does 95% of the PPK work in a library?

Only the cool kids...MLS for the win!

I think anyone who has ever lived in a major city has seen people eating out of trash cans. I don't think anyone will argue that it never happens. I think it's fair to argue, though, that it's not a main source of food for the homeless. What bothers me is that "homeless feed dumpstered food to their kids" was even brought up in a discussion about freeganism. Two completely different conversations.

That seemed to be the argument when I brought it up. So, apparently, some people will argue it. Unless...

...maybe that was what those people were expressing, not that it never happens, and I was mistaken before.

Well, that's on me. My argument was only that people shouldn't feed their children dumpstered food. I anticipated that homelessness would be proposed as an exception to that rule, so I sought to nip that argument in the bud.

Ok, I think the signal to noise ratio in this thread has gone way up on the wrong side so I am going to lock it. PM me if you have something NEW to add and I will maybe let you.

Mat.