Rubbish meals a gourmet treat for freegan diners

• Activists protests against over-consumption in US by getting food from bins

• 'Dumpster diving' grows in US since report claims 50% of food not eaten

• 'Freegans' celebrate Thanksgiving with other peoples' thrown-out food

Key quote

"People have this image of looking into a dumpster and seeing slimy garbage, but that's just not the case. At the same time, food poisoning is no joke, so you have to be careful" - Dr Michael Greger, director of public health and animal agriculture at US Humane Society

Story in full RIFLING through a rubbish bin in search of a scrap to eat used to be the preserve of tramps, but now a group of anti-capitalism activists in the United States have turned it into a form of protest - and an unconventional way of filling their plates with the finest-quality fare.

In sharp contrast to yesterday's Thanksgiving Day celebrations in the US, where copious amounts of turkey and pumpkin pie were consumed across the nation, the aim of the self-styled "freegan" movement - an amalgamation of the words free and vegan - is to highlight the profligacy of today's society, in which up to half of the food in the US goes to waste.

And the gourmet foods they collect while digging through the dustbins and rubbish skips of some of New York's finest supermarkets, restaurants and stores are a bonus.

On the menu at one recent freegan dinner party at an upmarket Greenwich Village apartment was eggplant (aubergine) parmesan with a salad of mixed greens and avocado dressing, and hors d'oeuvres of smoked mozzarella and crackers.

"We find more food than we could ever possibly eat," said Adam Weissman, whose freegan.info website features a citywide and state-by-state "dumpster directory", containing tips on where to find some of the best throwaways.

Among their favourite foraging sites in New Jersey, for example, is the Giant Gourmet Farmers Market in the city of Hackensack, a veritable goldmine for freegans, who can find "insane quantities" of fresh fish, tropical fruits and exotic vegetables, including figs, papayas, apricots, corn on the cobs and sweet peppers.

The directory notes that two of the market's skips are always full of cardboard which, it suggests, could be valuable material for "all your protest signs", but urges freegans to watch out for the local police.

"Hackensack cops can be a pain," one veteran freegan divulges. "I once had a cop search me, call in reinforcements, question me and stick his flashlight in dumpster garbage bags. He got hummus all over it - it was pretty funny,"

Meanwhile, in the city of Teaneck, New Jersey, so-called dumpster divers can find anything from fresh bread, doughnuts, muffins, vegetable dumplings, containers of home-made potato soup, sushi - and even the day's newspapers to browse while tucking into their free dinner.

Vegans avoid anything derived from animal sources, including dairy food, and any products tested on animals. Freegans say they take that a step further by employing alternative strategies for living, based on non-participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources.

Mr Weissman's website offers "trash- picking tutorials", a 22-minute instructional video, health and safety advice and a picture gallery of some of the richest pickings found by activists.

Dumpster diving is flourishing, particularly since the publication last year of a ten-year study led by Professor Timothy Jones, at the University of Arizona, highlighting America's throwaway society. He found that 40 to 50 per cent of food in the US never gets eaten, and that manufacturers lose tens of billions of dollars through inefficient production methods.

A 1997 US Department of Agriculture study put the loss at 27 per cent of total US food production, or 96 billion pounds of food.

"The number one problem is that Americans have lost touch with what food is for," Prof Jones said. "We have lost touch with the processes that bring it to the table, and we don't notice the inefficiency."

While there are concerns that digging in rubbish bins for food is not particularly healthy, some experts say the practice can be perfectly safe as long as certain guidelines are followed.

A number of safety tips from Dr Michael Greger, the director of public health and animal agriculture at the Humane Society of the US, appear on the freegan website.

"People have this image of looking into a dumpster and seeing slimy garbage, but that's just not the case," Dr Greger said. "At the same time, food poisoning is no joke, so you have to be careful."

Unopened packaged foods can usually be eaten safely for several days after the sell-by date, he said. Foods to avoid include meat and seafood, eggs, dairy, sprouts, cut melon and unpasteurised fruit juice, which can be susceptible to bacteria. Mould can be scraped or cut from foods that are hard or firm, and canned goods are normally OK unless they are "bulging or oozing".

Yesterday's Thanksgiving holiday gave freegans the perfect opportunity to highlight what Mr Weissman called "a celebration of excess".

More than 40 million turkeys were eaten nationwide as families gathered for their traditional Thanksgiving meals.

Urban foraging is not restricted to discarded food. Freegans rifle other people's waste for books, toiletries, CDs, toys and even kitchen appliances. Just about any consumer good can be found by rummaging, the group says, and by doing so activists "curtail garbage and pollution and lessen the overall volume in the waste-stream".

Such goods are often exchanged at "Really, Really Free Markets", similar to car-boot sales, in which people bring items to swap with each other and in which no money is exchanged.

Freegans buy only second-hand goods and therefore avoid putting money into any new production.