Feeding 5000, or, The Rebranding of Dumpster Diving

I have a seen a fair amount of press devoted to this lunch in London. It seems that an organisation intends to feed a bunch of people in downtown london food that would otherwise have been thrown out by super-markets. Sound familiar? That's because for years a loosely affiliated network known as Food Not Bombs has been doing the exact same thing in towns all over the US, Mexico, Canada, the UK (namely: London), for almost thirty years now.

Food Not Bombs noticed that supermarkets throw out tonnes of fresh food every year, often because it doesn't look right, has a soft spot or a discoloration, or has some other feature that disqualifies it from that coveted consumer-good status. So they went around getting this food and cooking up and serving up meals with it, specifically targetting a homeless clientele. While Food Not Bombs is not without its radical critics, it has had a longevity that sets it apart from most modern anti-capitalist organisations and is frequently cited by activists as a first politicizing influence.

But back to the wasted food thing - what did it take for the mainstream media to finally notice this? The answer is a simple: an author promoting his book.

I do think it's really great to have any chance to get more people to be conscious of wastefulness, however it's done, and I'm never going to decry a free lunch. That said, the media and Tristram's organisation liber-ate.org are presenting this thing as something radical and new, and that is a subtle snub towards the literally thousands of activists who have participated in Food Not Bombs over the years, not to mention the countless multitudes who have, at some point in their lives, dumpster-dived for survival or ideology.