Freegan vegans: Do you make an exception to your vegan diet when the food is found?

Question

For example, if someone leaves an untouched slice of pizza sitting at the table of a restaurant because he is late for work, would you make an exception to your vegan diet, since you are not creating a demand for pizza but rather eating a piece that would otherwise have been thrown away?

Answer 1

It's not that it's okay to eat it simply because it's sitting there and nobody else is going to eat it. It's not healthy and it's not vegan. If I ate it, then I wouldn't be vegan. If I could, I'd give it to somebody who was starving or something so that at least it's useful.

EDIT: What's with the thumbs down? Am I not allowed to share my opinion or something?

Answer 2

I have wondered that also. I dont think people answering this know what a freegan is. they keep acting like you mean all vegans. the best answer i can give you is that i once knew a few people who were close to being freegan, they lived in the apartment across from my girlfriend's and we were friends with them and hung out with them on occasion, and i never saw them with any meat. but they did try to give us newly expired cookie dough that would have contained egg once. and i believe that one of them told me that she was a vegetarian and another one of them told me she was a vegan. I'm not incredibly sure, but i think freegans can eat whatever, just as long as they dont pay for it, but most of them choose to be vegetarians or vegans in addition, if for no other reason because when you are dumpster diving it is safer that way.

i would ask them, but i dont know if they self-identify as freegans. plus, they like to ride the rails during the summer and probably wont have an apartment again till fall.

great question.

Answer 3

If i was in the bush and found dead kangaroo I would eat it. But human i wouldn't

Answer 4

I don't make exceptions. Making exceptions is what led me to fall off the vegan wagon a couple of months back.

Anything that has meat on it is a huge NO-NO.

Answer 5

Woow there, your assumption is wrong.

Eating "free" and wasted meat IS creating a demand.

If the resturant sees wasted meat, they will cook less next time. So clearing up the spare meat just encourages them to cook more and provide larger portions.

You would be vindicating thier choice to cook meat

Thats hardly a vegan thing to do, freegan or otherwise.

using the logic that its ok if its "waste or free", we can expand the logic to say you might as well scoff your face with all the spare McDonalds at the end of each shift.

Does that sound like the action of a vegan ?

eggs/meat, the arguement is the same. It seems to me someone is trying to justify that they eat eggs and yet call themselves a vegan.

"Troll's A No Life Loser ", well you may disagree but what i describe is EXACTLY what happens in our place. If we see 2 veggie sausages not eaten on a plate, we will cook less tomorrow. If the owner gives them to a freegan, we will see an empty plate and cook the same number tomorrow. The food has gone, we will replace it. The "freegan-vegan" has directly influenced us to cook more egg products.

That is direct from our daily expereince. But, of course, you are still free to say i'm wrong.

I would agree that SOME supermarkets don't care about what happens to food once it leaves the premise. But resturants definately do, they are always looking at whats wasted and adjust accordingly.

If i was runnig a supermarket and i saw egg-products fill the dumster, i'd order less. If i saw freegan-vegans take it, i would be less inclined to order less because i coudl see it was still going to some use.

Worst case....the supermaket sees the freegans, thinks they cannot afford it, and then does a special offer to lower the prices and encourage MORE consumption. Or they start creating special give-away boxes for the vegans, obviously this will include egg products because the supermarket have seen vegans eat eggs.

Once again, i think this is just someone looking to justify eating eggs and calling themself a vegan. Vegans know very well what the egg industry supports. why stop there, most people consider cattle to have better lives than caged hens, so why not eat waste beef products ?

Would eating free caged-hen eggs be bad, but eating free free-range eggs be ok ???

If your friend buys a pizza, and eats half of it, is it them ok to eat the other half, or do you have to wait for it to be on its way to the dumpster ?

Can you lean across the table and pick at bits they have left, or do you wait until they leave the resturant ?

The whole logic behind saying its ok to eat free eggs falls apart at this point.

Answer 6

i rather eat than wasting.....time/

Answer 7

No. I don't eat off of others' plates, first off. Secondly, there's nothing that makes me want to renig on my lifestyle. If there is an abudance of food leftover that I don't eat, I will go out of my way to give it to someone who can and will use it.

I stick to my vegan convictions 100%.

Answer 8

I firmly believe in freeganism. If you didnt eat that leftover whatever it is its going to waste and makes that animal's life completely worthless.

Answer 9

The point we're making by being vegan is that we are against any form of animal cruelty. Ultimately, the animal by-products used are from animals who have been tortured and killed for profit. It's almost the same thing as eating meat, but you're just accepting something else. If you're gonna eat the occasional pizza, than you're not really being a vegan for the right reasons. If you know you'll find yourself doing it, don't call yourself vegan or anything similar, just don't call yourself anything, we shouldn't be defining ourselves by the foods we eat anyway.

Answer 10

I don't make any exceptions...and I try not to eat random things That I find...

Answer 11

No I don't make exceptions. I feel like one will lead to many, well with me anyway.

Answer 12

No.

"If the restaurant sees wasted meat, they will cook less next time. So clearing up the spare meat just encourages them to cook more and provide larger portions." I disagree. The restaurant bases it's inventory on demand. What happens after the food is sold is neither here nor there.

"If we see 2 veggie sausages not eaten on a plate, we will cook less tomorrow." You don't cook the food when it's ordered? Don't let your customers catch wind of that!

Answer 13

Freegans are they anything to do with Freemasons that steal unused and abandoned stones from everywhere?

You can trust no one these days.