With the price of food in the city rising, along with the price of rent, comedian and filmmaker Jeff Seal has figured out a way to shop for food on a budget—actually no budget.
Seal spent four nights digging through the trash bags outside of various stores in the city and documented the process on video. He came away with a massive amount of perfectly edible food which hadn’t even passed its “sell by” date.
The video contains captions explaining the massive amount of food American businesses throw away. A startling 40 percent of the food available for consumption in the United States is thrown out every year.
The idea of eating food out of trash, especially New York City trash, probably sounds revolting. But Seal doesn’t dig through the smelly piles of garbage that have been sitting out on the sidewalk for days. He gets the trash when it’s fresh—straight out of Trader Joe’s or Duane Reade—and most of the trash bags don’t contain any rotting food at all.
With the homeless population in the city continuing to rise, you wonder why all this food isn’t being put to better use.
Watch the full video here:
Cover photo credit: Wikimedia commons