Inexperienced-GAF is uniting with black-and-white-GAF to really bring some convincing arguments against dumpster diving to the table . . .
I'd recommend withholding judgement unless you've given it a whirl. My experience of dumpster diving has been largely non-gross, non-dangerous, and rewarding. Most grocery stores don't have disgusting dumpsters because they are emptied very frequently. Usually the goods you are sifting through and taking are fresh to the dumpster, and most of them haven't even touched anything but the products beneath them.
Food gets thrown out in advance of the sell-by date, which is a very conservative date that is usually timed well before the use-by date, which is in turn a very conservative date about when to eat the food by.
Also, a lot of food gets tossed not because it is close to the sell-by date (again, not a date indicative of spoiling), but instead because the food was "damaged" somehow. Entire bags of avocados get thrown out because they were dropped, or because one is badly bruised. Whole FLATS of eggs get tossed because a single egg or two in a single carton break. Fruit gets thrown out like crazy due to single pieces being bruised. It's insane.
And so if you are willing to throw on some gloves (or not, I don't always) and dive in, you can get perfectly fresh, perfectly good food.
Grocery store dumpsters aren't usually that gross, and they certainly aren't disgusting cesspools in which you risk getting super sick from some disgusting infection. The fucking factory farms where your chicken comes from are 1000x more disgusting than these dumpsters.
Do they smell bad? Sure. So fucking what? I can handle a little odor, and if you can't, all the more for me.
That's nasty. Most of the stuff you are finding isn't even that expensive. Leave that stuff to the hobos that really don't have money and actually need it.
I find expensive cheese, yogurt, eggs, and meat all the time. Stuff that I typically can't afford. Too much talking in this thread without knowing what the fuck you are talking about.
They shouldnt do it because its pathetic. It just so happens that everyone else would also think youre pathetic.
It's pathetic because you think it is? Right, mate. Solipsism, much? I think the food waste that we generate while simultaneously leaving millions starving is pathetic. I think judging people who recognize that food waste and turn it into a positive food source is also pathetic. Of course, I doubt many people into diving are very concerned with a classist prick doling out judgement from his high throne.