Review: Dive!

[Flack]

Dive! is a 2010 documentary about people who obtain most of their food from dumpsters. We're not talking about people's fast food leftovers here; for the most part, we're talking about packaged food thrown away by grocery stores.

The filmmaker and his friends show that edible food is thrown out nightly by grocery chains. Perhaps an entire bag of potatoes might get thrown out because one is bad. Bananas get thrown out for turning brown, not for being rotten. Meat, fish, and chicken are thrown out before they go bad "just in case". So, every night, the filmmaker and his friends go dumpster diving for that day's bad food.

Throughout the film viewers are told just how delicious all this food is. One of the filmmaker's pals is a gourmet chef, who makes an admittedly delicious looking dessert from eggs and strawberries all retrieved from trash dumpsters.

There's no doubt in my mind that edible food is regularly thrown away. Smelly fish and bruised fruit won't kill you, and I have no doubt that supermarkets err on the side of cleanliness and health code violations. The documentary showed, for example, a carton of eggs thrown out because only one was broken. Wasteful? Yes.

If so much edible food is being thrown away, why aren't more people digging their groceries out of garbage dumpsters? The obvious answer is, because of the social stigma attached to doing so. The "average" person wouldn't want to admit to their peers that they raid trash dumpsters at night for their groceries instead of buying them from the local market.

And although I hate to stereotype, most of the people in this film look like people who would eat things out of trash dumpsters. They have raggedy hair, unkempt beards, ear plugs, multiple piercings and are covered in tattoos. If the filmmaker was attempting to get the average American to relate to his cause, I don't think it worked. I couldn't find anyone in the film I could relate to or wanted to be more like.

I appreciate the fact that too much food ends up in the dump, and perhaps these grocery stores could some up with an alternative to throwing all that food away -- maybe something like the "day old bread store" that my mom used to get our bread and Twinkees from. While I would agree that this country has a problem with being quick to throw things away, I'm not sure that hitting up trash dumpsters for questionable meat is the answer.

[Tdarcos]

If so much edible food is being thrown away, why aren't more people digging their groceries out of garbage dumpsters?

Because at least one newspaper - I think it was the Los Angeles Times - had reported - more than 20 years ago - that some supermarkets were routinely pouring bleach all over the food they threw in the dumpsters to contaminate it specifically to stop dumpster divers. This was back when Reagan was President.

I appreciate the fact that too much food ends up in the dump, and perhaps these grocery stores could some up with an alternative to throwing all that food away --

They are; some stores are cooperating with food pantries to distribute not-quite-expired or expired-but-still-usable-if-you-eat-them-within-a-few-days goods to homeless shelters and food banks.

maybe something like the "day old bread store" that my mom used to get our bread and Twinkees from.

The Hostess Thriftshop Bakery. There's one about a mile from my Credit Union. They're not everywhere and some are hard to get to. But they can have interesting items. In addition to their own "full size" snack pies for about 1/2 price (and you cannot have these pies, Pinback!) they sell Drakes boxed pies, a box of 8 half-sized pies for $3.50, the Drake's brand is currently only available in apple. They had Drake's cherry pies once, those were good too.

Since I can't get the cherry ones, definitely Pinback cannot have these pies either!

Hostess also makes its own breakfast cereal. They make a competing product to Cheerios and several others. Not sure if they had corn flakes but I do think they had a version of Frosted Flakes. They're Grrrrrrr ... oops, wait, can't say that, that's a trademark, and besides, I've never eaten them so I don't know what they taste like.