The Goats are Calling You

yes!!!!!!

ok first of all SAFETY:

• do not enter a dumpster ever.

• if the store uses compactors instead of normal bins cross that store off your list of potential spots forever

second of all Finding a spot:

• take note of where stores keep their bins and whether it’s accessible to the public. some have their loading dock just right at the back of the store where anyone can just walk up there and some have them locked inside or behind a fence. try to avoid anything that’s obviously blocked off from the public, it makes it harder to get in and out

• once you find a place that has accessible bins you’re going to want to figure out what time is the best to go. sometimes it’s right after closing, sometimes it’s about half hour before closing, sometimes it’s in the middle of the night. your goal is to minimize the possibilities of store employees running into you (unpleasant for everyone) and maximize the chance of there actually being anything edible in the bins. the sweet spot at mine is 10pm on the dot because that’s when the sales floor & delivery employees leave and the overnight warehouse employees no longer enter the loading dock until early morning

• you’re also going to want to try hitting the same spot several nights in a row because not every day will have them throw away ANYTHING. several times i’ve showed up and there’s been exclusively trash in the bins LOL. sometimes all you get is like. a loaf of bread and a head of lettuce. and then other times you get three shopping bags worth of fresh veg + fruit + bread and live like a king for a week.

• most places the #1 thing that gets thrown out every single night in large quantities is bakery items. they throw an entire separate trash bag of loose bread and pastry here every night. it’s great but also at least at mine the bakery stuff isn’t individually packaged so you need to bring your own bags to get them home. unless you want to carry a huge trash bag home i guess.

• some stores don’t throw much of anything away. for me sainsburys, asda, m&s, and tesco are always bad spots because they have their own ways of getting rid of stuff. in the us where zero waste programs are less common you’re probably going to be in luck no matter where you go. i’ve heard aldi and walmart are especially bad/good.

• unless you have several reliable spots you can hit every time it’s unlikely it’s going to be the main source of anything, just supplemental stuff, which can still be great bc fruit & veg is expensive

FOOD SAFETY !!

• if there is a LOT of the same item in there before you go crazy check recalls. my spot throws away cans if they get dented or dirty, flour/sugar if the bag is dirty, entire pallets of egg cartons if an egg breaks in a different carton and entire boxes of surplus stock but sometimes this will be because they’re all contaminated with ecoli. google!!!

• please don’t take unsealed items the bins are highly disgusting and you don’t know what’s gone inside the packaging. i do take stuff like citrus fruit etc if it’s not dirty and is sort of on the top of the pile bc you don’t eat the peel anyway but exercise caution

• wash everything well. you should probably move stuff from og packaging to clean bags or containers depending on what it is. give it a good wipe w like hand sanitizer wipes otherwise before you put it in the fridge/freezer.

• when there has been a fridge/freezer malfunction and the bin is full of like, drinks or sandwiches or whatever please internalize the fact that you don’t know how long the cold chain has been broken and act accordingly. dairy and meat are the biggest risks after seafood. i don’t touch seafood at all. nothing you get out of the bin is “safe” espec if it’s already out of date (you don’t know if it’s been refrigerated or if it’s been sitting in a cart somewhere waiting to be thrown out since yesterday) but using common sense & your senses like smell/sight can def cut down on risks.

general TIPS:

• always leave the area the same or better than you found it - pick up anything you dropped on the ground and close the bin lids. the employees might know that ppl dumpster dive and don’t care unless you’re causing problems with raccoons or rats.

• if an employee catches you and asks you to leave be polite and just leave. come back another time. dumpster diving itself is legal in the US and the UK but if you’re on private property like the store loading dock they’re well within their rights to ask you to bounce. it isn’t worth it to have them call the cops even if it’s a public bin on city property and you’re technically in the right. be quiet, organized, and fast to avoid getting caught lol.

Things like intentional malnourishment, intentionally incapacitating vital organs through surgery, denial of potentially lifesaving medical care until those things are done, etc.

Those are all pretty extreme. The kinds of things it feels like a “first do no harm” system should have a lot of solid evidence for before recommending or implementing them.

Okay, have you proved the fat caused the illnesses?

“No.”

Have you proved people have better long term outcomes from losing weight?

“We can’t.”

Right. And why is that again?

“Well to measure that, we’d have to compare the health outcomes of three populations - thin people, fat people, and fat people who became thin through weight loss.”

So do that.

“But there actually are not enough people who became thin through weight loss and kept it off for us to do a long term study on how that impacts their health. The sample size is too small.”

So you can’t prove that changing fat people to thin people would change their health outcomes to those of thin people.

Because you can’t prove that fat people can become thin in the first place.

But you’re still telling them to do that as your primary prescription.

Even when the recommended and unproven methods to do so are potentially very dangerous.

“Yeah, but”

What if as a doctor I found out pale people get skin cancer more often than darker skin people, so to prevent skin cancer, started recommending tanning to my palest patients? Would that be good health care?

“Don’t be ridiculous. That’s not what we’re doing.” Isn’t it though???

Cashier: it’s 11 dollars.

Kaylee: oh nuggets.

Me: *gets up to fix it*