Freegan Diet

I freely take what is freely given, with no obligation on either side.  I forage for wild, feral, and domestic edibles.  I also freely rely on human generosity.  I live on waste: dumpster-diving, trash can fishing, table-surfing, and sometimes asking people and food-service institutions for extras and throw-aways.  I don't ask people to give me what they don't intend to throw out.  I also eat roadkill, if it is fresh, of course.  I've eaten squirrel, racoon, rabbit, and deer, so far.  I've also eaten ants, grubs, grasshopeers, crickets, termites, lizards & snakes. 

 

I think I'd be a vegan if I used money, unless I could hunt.  I do not want to support or encourage the animal industry.  But I will eat fresh meat thrown in dumpsters.  I hope to talk about the ethics of eating meat later.

Wild & Feral Edibles

Around Moab

When I'm living near Moab in the Utah desert, I eat lots of wild plants.  Plants of the mustard family are  are almost always edible and found year-round, not only in Moab, but around the US.  Watercress is a mustard and plentiful in Utah streams.  Then there is globe mallow, with edible leaves even in winter.  Globe mallow is related to an edible mallow that grows in towns all over the US, too.  Many parts of cat-tail are edible, though only in warmer seasons.  Evergreen needles of all kinds (including pines & cedars) are high in vitamin C & other vitamins & minerals and make delicious tea, which I'm constantly drinking.  Even high in the mountains you don't have to worry about vitamin deficiencies if you think to drink delicious pine & cedar teas.  I often eat prickly pear cactus pads, raw, through the winter, and prickly pear fruits in the summer.  The fruits are delicious & juicy, a lot like kiwi fruit; but you have to scrape off the micro-needles with a stone.  Juniper berries are good for spice flavoring when green, roasting for a coffee substitute, and are good eating straight when ripe (brown-purple colored).  Wild onions are a winter & early-spring treat. 

Mormon tea has a little pseudo-fed in it, good for colds, and the bark & buds of trees & shrubs in the willow family (including pussywillow, cottonwood, aspen, poplar, etc) contain a precurser to aspirin, for pain relief in a tea.  Service berries and pinion nuts are a more rare treat.

In town I gather fruits& nuts from orchards & feral trees & bushes: mulberry, apple, peach, apricot, plum, almond, walnut, cherry, grape, & rose-hips.  Miniature crab apples are delicious in the winter after they have frozen & dried a bit.  Honey locus beans can be a main staple sustaining you all year long.  The beans can be eaten raw when green, and when dry must be cooked for a couple hours, like pintos.  They are a bit slimy, but high in protein.  Some scholars believe that John the Baptist ate honey locust beans rather than locust and wild honey -- "locust and wild honey" possibly being a scripture mistranslation.  

Hitching & Walking

Again, I can usually find varieties of mustard anywhere in the US, often year-round.  Fennel is common along roadsides near the west coast, as well as amaranth.  You can eat both the leaves and the seeds of amaranth.  Thistle, related to artichoke, has delicious hearts & young leaves.  I glean farmland & orchards for produce & nuts, too.  I  could go for weeks living on just fruit & nuts on the west coast.

I once walked down beach coast of northern California for weeks and lived totally off the land, eating mussels, sea-weed, berries, & shrubbery. 

I lived totally off the land in Alaska twice, eating salmon, berries, & mushrooms.  My first time in Alaska I speared salmon with my friend.  My second time in Alaska I found it was actually easier to catch salmon with my bare hands, very slowly moving my hands with patience.

Roadkill & Wasted Animals

As I've said, I've eaten squirrel, racoon, rabbit, and deer, so far.  I can't in good conscience kill animals to eat them if I don't need to, when there are droves & droves of meats thrown away in dumpsters.  It is criminal that animals live their lives confined in cages, only to be killed and thrown into dumpsters by the tons every day.  It is criminal not only for the animals' sake, but it is criminal when millions of humans on earth are starving. 

Tyrants Retaining Their Own Waste (Anal Retention)

Often when you are caught at a dumpster by store owners, you are treated with contempt.  What is contemptible and inexcusable is the waste, and what is  both contemptible and ridiculous is locking up your waste (called anal retention) to keep hungry people from eating, and having the gall to act self-righteous in the process.  This is mental illness, institutionalized and whitewashed.  Notice how they almost always tell you it is "for your safety".  Notice that tyranny in all its forms all over the world is almost always done "for your safety", "for your security".  The corporate tyrant is turning the tables to look like the compassionate one, the intelligent one.  The tyrant is telling you you are not smart enough to take care of yourself.  Simply because the tyrant is a have and you are a have-not somehow makes the tyrant worthy to treat you like a child, when in actuality it is the tyrant who is living in ignorance and needs educating. 

The tyrant is also not speaking his or her own mind, not speaking from the heart, but is speaking a script programmed into him or her by the corporation that is paying him or her.  Notice how the tyranny in humans is not from reality, not from human-ness, but is scripted programming, paid programming.  A human running from the heart and not from a program is not going to guard a dumpster from the hungry.  A human running from the heart has common sense, because he or she is not motivated by dollars and cents.  This is the secret in human relations, learning how to see the human beneath the scripted program, and appealing to that human.  Believe it or not, there is actually a human beneath the facade of corporate managers and cops and their lackeys.  Learn how to be totally real, totally sincere, with these robots and, as a result, you learn how to wake up the sleeping human within them.  I mean, respect them, as humans.  Never respect them as robots.  You can love a human.  You cannot love a robot, so don't pretend.  Try it.  Be bold, be brave, be real: be wise as a serpent, gentle as a dove.