Welcome to the first episode of the Freegan Kitchen cooking show. This video blog is an introduction to finding and creating delicious, healthy and quite safe meals, using ingredients found by dumpster diving behind grocery stores. The concept of cooking gourmet meals from dumpster diving was developed some time in 2004 by the DoEat Collective, a group of artists who wanted to demonstrate the waste of food in our culture. A "freegan" is a person who chooses to eat food thrown away by stores and restaurants to avoid waste and limit their impact on the environment.
I know the idea of eating food from the dumpster (also known as dumpster diving) may seem quite repulsive at first and may take a little getting used to - it did for me. But consider two things; first, enormous amounts of food are thrown out every day by grocery stores. Much of the food found by dumpster diving is perfectly safe to eat and is discarded solely because of an expiration date or to make way for "fresher" produce. Second, this food is most often found in a protective package or wrapper. Obviously, this type of cooking is limited to certain types of food products, such as produce or bread-type products. You wouldn't want to be using meat or fish (or some other food prone to rapid bacterial growth) found in a midnight dumpster diving session. So the real aversion to consuming this dumpster food is due to cultural and psychological preferences. But, just how "clean" is the food you purchase in a grocery store anyway? Consider the many steps your food traveled along the typical production/distribution value chain before you placed it in you refrigerator: someone had to pick the food, process, package, store, ship, stock, scan, and bag it. Do you think someone used clean hands and tools every step of the way? And that shopping cart isn't anywhere near sterile either. We live in a society that is as dirty as it is wasteful. So, although I'm not aware of any definitive scientific studies, I don't think the food found in a dumpster is any dirtier than the food bought in the checkout line. We've never gotten sick from anything we've cooked up, which is more than I can say from some of the restaurants I've patronized. This "gourmet freeganism" is more ironic considering that I am a clean freak that washes my hands constantly. Go figure...
Wednesday, July 12, 2006New "Dumpster Diving Tips" Video for Freegan KitchenOk, much freeganish (that a word?) or freegan content has been sitting on my dark harddrive for a while and not getting any exposure or adulation from the outside world. To amend this, I just posted a short (1 min.) video, Dumpster Diving Tips. Special thanks and big ups to Jason, Bobo,Camilo and Niamh (that's Niamh pictured below). More urban foraging video soon, really...posted by Freegan Chef at 12:16 PM 3 comments Thursday, March 23, 2006New Chapter Titles feature!Oh, I just added chapter titles to the video's playback bar. They're on the right hand side with 8 titles like, "dumpster diving", etc. They let you jump to different parts of the video once it's fully loaded.posted by Freegan Chef at 1:32 AM 0 comments Tuesday, March 21, 2006Hello World! Here we go with episode one, just click on the screen shot above to load the vlog. Please post or email me with suggestions for new dishes, constructive criticism, or praise...posted by Freegan Chef at 11:38 PM 1 comments Previous Posts
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