NYC dumpster diving for food

I saw a picture of a crew cleaning out a damaged grocery store and caned goods and food in sealed glass jars was being tossed into a garbage truck. It surprised me that unspoiled, uncontaminated food was being thrown away. O_o

TDD

I'd guess that a LOT of the food being put in dumpsters is just fine. But, insurance and so on, prevents the store owners from donating or selling.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

I saw a picture of a crew cleaning out a damaged grocery store and caned goods and food in sealed glass jars was being tossed into a garbage truck. It surprised me that unspoiled, uncontaminated food was being thrown away. O_o

TDD

If it has been immersed in contaminated water, it could be very dangeous to opn and use it.

The chemical, E. coli and coliform levels were too high in the flood waters to risk contamination under the jar lid- They were even advising to toss cans if they had been underwater.

Jim

"Stormin Mormon" wrote

In today's lawsuit-happy society, if they sold it someone would claim to have been poisoned and sue the store for all they money the have. That's why it was dumped.

Following Katrina some food stores (Wal Mart) told folk to take what they needed/could use. Down side on the can goods ... no labels.

A few in the media and a lot of the far right claimed it was 'looting'.

Friends who are in the insurance adjusting business mentioned that much of their looting claims came from merchants that were flooded out. Odd coincidence that.

The Daring Dufas wrote in news:k70lsj$tvk$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

Because baterial is in all the nooks and crannies of the jar lids.

And, the NYC refugees and homeless aren't likely to have a bleach solution to kill the baterial.

Baterial? Must be funetic spelling.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

Because baterial is in all the nooks and crannies of the jar lids.

Dumpster diving is pretty common in NY, it doesn't take a storm.

Speaking of, I had walked out of a gas station. Heard this cry for help coming from behind a fenced in area, where the dumpster is kept. Skeptical, I walked over cautiously thinking it may be a set up to get me mugged! Anyways, a woman said please help me. She was in the dumpster, there were some crates in front of the dumpster. She was a VERY large woman, probably 350lbs +, stuck in the dumpster. Apparently she was trying to retrieve cardboard boxes, reached in too far, and fell in, and noway to get out.

I let the fire dept handle it, didn't want to get dragged in there, she might have eaten me!

Yes, I heard that on the radio the day aftrer the storm was here (Baltimore) They said even sealed cans had to be thrown out. I don't believe it -- I'm sure it can be washed in hot water and soap or with alcohol or lysol, and rinsed off, but I'm sure it's still grounds for a successful lawsuit if they sold the stuff.

They also said after 4 hours, I think they mean without electricity for the fridge, foods they named had to be thrown out. That's ridiculous. It doesn't even start to get cold in four hours. I had little icecream dishes (4 for a dollar) in my freezer, and they hadn't even thawed in the 7 hours I had no electricity.

They also said if the foods they named reached 40 degrees F, they had to be thrown out. More nonsesnse. Hey, I keep my fridge at 45 all year round and it takes a week or weeks for anything to spoil. Somethings like tomatoes get a mold spot before that, which can be cut out, or they get unappealing after a week but they can still be eaten.

Everything in the fridge could last 2 or 3 days without power. I live alone but a familiy of four might open the doors more and cause things to warm up faster, especially if one opens the door and just stares at the food.

I routinely forget and leave the milk out all night and it's always good the next day all day. If it starts to go sour, my mother made sour milk pancakes with it.

I think they mentioned butter. For one reason or another butter can be left out for days without spoiling. I think making butter was a means of preserviing milk.

Not radio. It was the TV, some morning show, and except maybe for cans and jars, I don't think they said anything about being under water, only about getting warm.

I've never lost food in a power failure, even one that went for 3 days. I eat the most perishable stuff first and then gradually eat the less perishable. 24 hours without power means nothing.

That's true. I was drving down 2nd avernue in the 20's and I saw a big, though not very tall dumpster filled almost to the brim with books. I parked. There were 3 or 4 guys in the dumpster gooing through the books and I joined them. They were on just about every topic. Other people stood and watched and some of them would point to a book now and then and ask one of us to get it for them.

I got 15 or 20 books that day, and I went back 2 of the next 3 days and got 15 more, all very interesting. The pile of books kept going down, (so there were far more people doing this than the four of us the first day) although whoever was cleaning out a warehouse might have been adding more.

LOL I still raid dumpsters in Baltimore, expecially for tv's and electrical things -- one year I found five good electronic things in the one nearest my house the day after Xmas -- which I can usually fix if I actually take them. Some are barely broken. But when I'm serious and the dumpster is deep, I bring a 3 step step-ladder, with a weight attached to some nylon twine attached to the ladder. I throw the weight into the dumpster, climb up the ladder and climb in, then I pull the ladder in with me. When it's time to leave I do the opposite.

I almost forgot. Once I found an electric wheelchair next to the dumpster, not just a scooter but a medical one, with a joystick and a headrest and something special for one leg . I couldn't push it home, and I couldn't handle it when I pushed the stick forward and walked behind it, so I had to sit in it and ride it home (300 feet) The battery was fully charged! I called a guy I know of who runs a medical supply house and he came over and looked at it and said it was

I think I had seen the guy who used it. He'd be outside sitting in the sun once in a while when I drove by, sometimes with another guy in a wheel chair. I waved but never stopped to talk. I think he died and the apartment building janitor just threw the thing away without thinking someone could use it. It just needed replacing of some of the foam rubber and its cover.

Best to be cautious.

In college my roommate insisted that ketchup didn't need to be refridgerated and I insisted that Hershey's syrup didn't need to be, so we left them both out all the time and we both learned the other was right. (The syrup gets a layer of mold after a week or two, but only if you leave it uncovered. If you pour it and cover it immediatyely that doesn't happen, and if it does, you can just remove the lid and pull off the layer of mold. The syrup underneath is fine. And he was right about ketchup, which stays out all the time at restaurants.

I don't think I'd want anything to do with a can that had made contact with the East River either.

Eaxactly on cans. You can give them a good clean up and look/test for punctures.

Stuff with modern twist lids are a bit more dubiou as unlike the old screw lids, it really is a shrt parth the the goods inside, I doubt that I'd want to trust any of those, even those that stillhad a good vacum. removing the lid might just dislodge some contaminant to fall inside and that could be enough for a very painfull episode.

It depends on the item. You have to ensure that NONE of the surface area has melted and then refrozen. It isn't about your stuff in your freezer, but the stuff in open top display cabinents as they rely on the continual blanket of cold air to keep them safe. .

It isn't about spoil, but survivability of microbes.

Unfortunately, the number of people with reall cooking skills these days is inversely proportional to the amount of prepackaged foor a supermarket sells.

Old food methods from short delivery mechanisms can not be compared to modern industrial food methods with long delivery chains.

We have a vegetable garden mainly because the food tastes so much better.

We had food factories that sold boxes of damaged cans like that. You knew it was canned fruit, but it was unknon until you opened it. Unfortunately, not too many people tolerated that method as a choice for dessert.

I'm glad you're such an expert. If I could guess, any such lawsuit would be tossed, if not be a sane judge but by a jury made up of people who lived through the disaster and scrambled for food. The jury would likely tell the complaining party to shut the hell up an go away. ^_^

TDD

Sadly unlikely. most juries are biased towards the welfare recipeint and whilst some would have that attitude, many are handout focused. YMMV.

In this country, if the item is sold, it has to meet health requirements. thes requirements do not in any way allow taking a bath in flood waters.

I also saw pictures and video of neighborhoods full of people raiding the dumpsters like a troupe of monkeys. I suppose they didn't care about the possibility of contamination. Oh yea, the majority of them were Caucasian for those of you who may have a Politically Correct twitch. ^_^

TDD