Goals and Principles

SLO Food Not Bombs is an effort to feed anyone who is hungry. We collect surplus food that would otherwise go to waste from grocery stores, bakeries and markets, sometimes incorporating dumpster diving, then preparing it into community meals which are served for free to anyone who is hungry. Our central beliefs are:

• If governments and corporations around the world spent as much time and energy on feeding people as they do on war, no one would go hungry.
• There is enough food in the world to feed everyone, but so much of it goes to waste needlessly, as a direct result of capitalism and militarism.
• Vegetarian food is both healthy and nonviolent.

In conjunction with providing food to those in need and working to promote a healthy diet and voluntary association, SLO Food Not Bombs also tries to call attention to poverty and homelessness in SLO county by sharing food in public places and facilitating gatherings of poor, homeless and other disenfranchised people. There are three tenets to our philosophy:

• Decision making by consensus
• Nonviolence
• Vegetarianism

Anyone who wants to cook may cook, and anyone who wants to eat may eat. SLO Food Not Bombs strives to include everyone.