How To Eat For Free

As countries develop, spending on food as a proportion of total income tends to decline. This also means that people in poorer countries have to devote a larger share of their income to buying food. This proportion is almost 50 % for some countries.

Despite the downwards trending spening on food, Australian's still spend an average of $204 per week per household on food and non-alcoholic beverages, or 17 % of the total of expenditure on goods and services per household. That figure for a lone person is an average of $104 spent per week on food and non-alcoholic beverages. Obviously this is a significant cost for most people, but it doesn't have to be this way if you so choose.

If you're strapped for cash, or want to save money, I've got a few tips on how to eat for free. Since I grew up in a poor household in country Victoria and was a student on Youth Allowance for five years when I moved to Melbourne, paying my living expenses and university expenses entirely on my own, I have a tendency to be frugal and thrifty, even though I now earn a good wage working as a civil engineer. Part of this propensity also comes from my anti-consumerist attitude and my strong dislike of waste and my pro-freeganism. So although I don't track my own spending, I estimate I'd be spending significantly less than $104 per week on food and non-alcoholic beverages.

Tip 1: dumpster-diving
Dumpster diving is a practice which seems to be increasing in popularity in Australia. Most people I speak to seem to have heard of it (maybe because I've already told them about it?), but I think it's becoming more widely known. In fact, just the other night I was in a conversation at a house party in Preston, and of the five participants in that particular conversation, three of them were regular dumpster divers! More than half of the sample! However my friend Kelvin was quick to inform me I was in the "Northcote-Preston reality distortion field", and that such an observation is not consistent with the general population.

If you're unfamiliar with dumpster diving, basically it involves going out and finding the dumpsters of your local supermarkets/bakeries/fruit & veggie stores/etc and retrieving the thrown-out food/goods from those dumpsters. If you want to know more about it, there are plenty of articles on the internet, see here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

If you wanted to, you could probably live entirely off dumpstered food. I live near the Northcote plaza so I regularly dumpster-dive at the Aldi and Coles dumpsters there. The Aldi dumpsters are convenient because they're not locked and are small and easy to reach into; the Northcote Coles dumpsters often aren't locked either nowadays, but are sometimes latched. In other Melbourne suburbs the Coles/Woolworths dumpsters may be locked, but there are plenty of keys floating around in the freegan/alternative/dumpster-diving community which you should be able to get a hold of and cut a copy. I'm led to believe they use the same key throughout Australia for all Coles Dumpsters and the same key for all Woolworths dumpsters.

I suspect the the dumpsters in Northcote (and the dumspters in the other inner-northern suburbs of Melbourne) would be the most highly frequented by dumpster divers due to the demographics of those suburbs; I often come across other dumpster-divers when out foraging at Northcote Plaza. Just the other night, my housemate Sarah and I stopped by the Coles dumpster and came across a guy dumpster-diving who we started chatting to. It turned out he was my other housemates friends new housemate!
But despite the popularity, I still find plenty of good food there - it's amazing how much gets thrown out! I also suspect that the food thrown out in upper-class suburbs such as Toorak, Brighton, South Yarra and other suburbs south-east of the city.

Much of the food we eat in my sharehouse is dumpstered food. We haven't bought a loaf of bread for months, plenty of our fruit and veggies are dumpstered, as well as other miscellaneous items. See some of the photos below of food that I've recovered from dumpsters.

A range of fruit and vegetables from the Northcote Plaza Aldi dumpster

A range of bread and crumpets in the Aldi dumpster.

Bread, fruit and vegies from the Aldi dumpster, with our Swedish couchsurfers Catherine and Sointu helping out.

Vegies, fruit, and LOTS of grapes, with our German couchsurfer Lucas.

A delicious strawberry cake from the Aldi dumpster.

A range of quality sourdough and dense/seedy/wholemeal delicious breads, most of which were not even out of date, from the Northcote Plaza Coles dumpster. Anything that can't be consumed initially is put in the freezer for consumption later.

A heap of freshly baked bread from the Coles dumpster at Barkley Square, Brunswick.

A range of quality loaves of bread and roles, fresh from the Coles dumpster.

Loaves of bread inside the Northcote Aldi dumpster.

Other notable items I've recovered include:

• Full casks of Aldi's finest cask wine - Albertson's Dry Red;
• Flavoured milk (usually iced coffee because it's obviously the worst flavour of flavoured milk)
• Bottles of wine;
• Almost a full slab of cruisers (someone must have dropped the slab and broken some of the bottles, and thrown the whole thing out);
• Glass bottles of soft-drink/lemonade:
• Some pornographic magazines and DVD's, which I cunningly planted in my housemates back-pack, bass case, under his bed and in his book shelf. He doesn't like pornography and upon discovering it in his back-pack, he walked into the living room holding his porno mag up with a confounded look on his face announcing he'd found it in his bag and that he had no idea where it came from. "Haha, sure you don't mate, good one", I told him. Hehehe;
• Eggs. Dozens and dozens of eggs! It seems that when someone in the supermarket drops an egg carton and some of the eggs break, they throw the whole carton out, even though most of the eggs are still fine! We haven't bought eggs for months, and there are literally about 40 eggs in the fridge;
• Deli products such as fine cheeses and quiches;
• Meat. I haven't been brave enough to take any meat home and eat it, but it's probably often fine, and you often find it in the dumpsters;
• A jar of mints;
• Boxes and boxes of "Buddy Muddy Bears", little individually wrapped bear-shaped cakes which Aldi sells;
• A box of Aldi's version of the Mars Bar, and other Aldi chocolates;
• Loose muesli bars and chocolate

Basically I guess anything that is sold in the supermarket you could potentially find in the dumpster.

Tip 2: Urban foraging
Dumpster-diving is a type of urban foraging, a sub-set if you like, but this tip covers the other types of urban foraging. Much food can be found for free in urban environments. For example (not exactly urban), someone in my home-town of Daylesford produced a map showing all the free public food in the local commons, including fruit trees and bushes, seeds, herbs, mushrooms, animals, etc. There are in fact many edible weeds, many of which can be found in Melbourne and other cities, and a bloke called Adam Grubb has written a book on it. In fact, (edible) weeds are one of the healthiest things you can eat, not to mention the most sustainable! You can find weed distribution maps, weed galleries and other info here.

Mallow: these weeds are edible, and they are prolific in our back-yard in Northcote, I've pulled out hundreds of them!

There are also things like berry bushes, olive trees and fruit trees, and there's a website for people in Melbourne to view and post the locations of these for other people's benefit.

Tip 3: Grow your own food
One of the most satisfying ways of eating for free is by growing your own food. If you have a back yard then it's easy to plant some vegies and herbs. We've planted a variety of things in our backyard in Northcote, including tomatoes, pumpkin, zucchini, lettuce, silver-beet, spinach, cucumber, eggplant, beetroot, carrot, rhubarb, basil, rosemary, coriander, strawberries, onion, chives, potato, radish, red kidney beans, etc. You can either grow them from seed, or buy seedlings from the local nursery, or obtain some great varieties from friends or members of the community if you're in the loop. Herbs are often better grown in pots, and this is obviously a good option if you live in an apartment and don't have a backyard.
One of the most important factors in growing your own food is soil preparation. A good way to prepare your soil for a garden is by doing your own compost. Collect any fruit/vegie scraps from the kitchen, and create a compost heap (or use a compost bin). I've heard that compost should ideally be 50% nitrogen sources (e.g. fruit/vegie scraps) and 50% carbon sources (e.g. autumn leaves, paper, paper towel, card-board, etc), and the heap should be turned every week to aerate it. A worm farm is also a great way to produce some nutrient-rich dirt.
Another useful tip is to collect decomposing fruit/vegies from dumpsters (see Tip 1 above) or from the local market, and use these to increase the volume of your compost. Some markets (e.g. Preston, Queen Vic, Footscray) will give away "compost" (left-over fruit and vegies) for free at the end of the day.

Tip 4: Hunt for your own food
Often when I go back home to Dad's place where I grew up on a farm at Mt Franklin (central Victoria), I take the 0.22 rifle out and hunt rabbits. I'll then skin them and use the best ones for eating, and give the rest to the dogs.

Frying up some rabbit with olive oil and garlic.

Rabbit and vegetable curry.

If you have the right equipment (i.e. rifles), you can also go out into the bush and shoot a deer or a kangaroo. I haven't done it myself but have friends that do, and I've eaten some delicious venison and roo meat as a result.
In an urban setting, I've often seen rabbits hopping around at Docklands, although shooting them with a rifle may not be appropriate in this setting...
If fishing takes your fancy, I'm sure you could catch some fish in the local streams (you need a fishing licence though). I often see folks fishing in the lower reaches of the Moonee Ponds Creek on my ride to work, although I'm not sure this would be my first choice of creek to fish in.

A bloke fishing at the down-stream end of the Moonee Ponds Creek near Docklands.

Tip 4: Live with housemates that work in a muffin shop/bakery/restaurant/etc
My housemate Arthur works in a muffin shop part-time on Monday and Tuesday afternoons, and each Monday and Tuesday evening he typically brings home a bag or two full of delicious muffins! He generally doesn't even eat them himself because he's worked in the muffin shop for years and the novelty of eating muffins has somewhat worn off, so that leaves them all for me and my other housemates.
Arthur also swaps muffins for other food such as pasta, pizza, focaccias and sushi at the other shops at the food-court that he works in at Southbank, so he also often bring these items home.
My other housemate Cattie works at Roll'd and she occasionally brings home a heap of rice paper rolls.

A selection of muffins that Arthur brought home.

Sarah and I about to devour some muffins.

Tip 5: Avoid waste! Eat everything off your plate and the pans/dishes, eat questionable left-overs, cook creatively, etc
I have an aversion to waste, and barely any food goes to waste in our house. Once I'm finished dinner, my plate is almost clean enough to put back on the shelf. I scrape out any morsels of food left on the cooking dishes and eat them too. I often cook a large amount and keep left-overs in the fridge, which I'll take for lunch at work or eat for dinner on a subsequent night. I'll generally eat left-overs up to two weeks after they've been cooked, which many people seem to consider risky, but I've never experienced any adverse repercussions from it.
Our cooking is also primarily based on what we have at home (e.g. the vegies available in the garden or the things I've brought home from the dumspter). This strategy seems obvious, but it can take some creativity to use several seemingly uncomplimentary ingredients together for one dish. I also generally ignore "use by" and "best before" dates (although I tend to give more consideration to a use-by date than a best before date); instead, I rely on a visual inspection, and most importantly, the sniff test. If it looks fine and smells fine, it probably is fine. I place a good deal of faith in the sniff test.
Recently, with various housemates, past housemates and couch-surfers coming and going, we've accumulated an agglomeration of various supplies, and end up, for example, with five different bottles of black-bean sauce in the cupboard/fridge. Most of them were past their best before date, one of them four years past the use-by date. Sarah and I decided to combine them all together with some stir-fried vegies, served with rice and it was indeed a delicious meal and we didn't make us sick.
The other day I was going through my cupboard to get some meal ideas for dinner and I came across a packet of water crackers which went out of date in 2008! I don't think I'll eat them, but to avoid them going to waste I might take them along to a party to share - drunk people will eat anything, right? ;)

Some water-crackers I found in the cupboard, which went out of date on October 12, 2008 at 11:50 am.

Taking these kinds of measures means you'll waste less food, which means you won't have to buy or source as much food.

Tip 6: Take advantage of free food at work
I work full time in an office in Docklands, and there are often meetings, seminars, workshops, forums, training sessions, presentations, etc which are catered for. Catering typically provides more food than is needed due to the risk of under-catering, and due to people not wanting to consume too much and put on weight. This means that there is often left-over food which is typically left out in the kitchenettes for anyone who wants them. I imagine other workplaces are similar in this regard.
I regularly go for a walk around the office to mitigate the risk of sitting down for too long, and I keep an eye out for any left-over food and take advantage of it.

Some left-over food in the office.

Tip 7: Sneak into  business seminars/corporate functions held at hotels and take advantage of the food provided
You'll be able to use this tip regardless of whether you work in an office. If you know about a hotel, function centre or other venues which regularly host seminars/corporate functions/forums, etc, dress up in business attire and wander on in, pretending you're part of the same organisation. Many organisations are so big that nobody recognises everybody else in their own organisation so you won't be out of place. If people start making small talk with you, just be polite and go along with it, letting them lead the conversation and adding apt remarks as you pick up on who the organisation is and the topic of conversation. If it's a smaller organisation, they may just assume you're new; otherwise just wait until they've gone then swoop in like a seagull and snap up what's been left behind.

Sandwiches, fruit, crackers, cheese and pizza at a corporate workshop.

Muffins at a corporate workshop.

Tip 8: Eat friends left-over food at restaurants and randoms left-over food at restaurants
Many people, especially humans of the smaller variety, seem to leave leave food on their plates while eating out. If you're out with friends and you notice they've finished eating but haven't finished their meal, why not politely ask them "are you going to eat that?", and usually they'll respond with "no, do you want it?" If they don't offer it, follow up by asking "mind if I finish it for you?" They'll obligingly hand it over to you and voilà, you've just obtained some free food and prevented it from going to waste!
You can employ a similar strategy with people you don't know in the restaurant/eatery, although caution is required as many people will think it rude, and odd. It's a safer strategy to wait for them to leave, and then inconspicuously take any left-over food they've abandoned before the waiter takes it and throws it out. This strategy also works well when walking past outdoor eating areas such as many of the restaurants on Lygon St. Keep an eye out for a few left-over slices of pizza, chips or finger food - these items are safe bet and convenient, and you'll have more confidence that they won't contain the persons slobber and you'll have less risk of contracting any nasty germs or viruses.

I bought the pie, but the chips were left behind by the previous customers.

Tip 9: Share food!
If you have a surplus of food, then share it! If you've had a bumper crop of zucchini's or tomatoes, offer some to your neighbours or friends, and often when they have a surplus of something, they'll return the favour.
Don't be afraid to ask your neighbours for any herbs or fruit you notice growing in their garden. Our next-door neighbour in Northcote has a big lemon tree full of lemons and doesn't seem to use them, and we've asked on occasion to have a few, which they've given us. We asked the next neighbour along for some Rosemary from his bush in his front garden, and he was happy for us to take some. I planted one of the sprigs so we now have our own rosemary bush. The neighbour on the other side kindly gave us a handful of surplus capsicums they'd grown.
Use surplus food (such as from the dumpster or garden) to cook a large dinner and invite friends over to share it with you. This adds to the enjoyment of the meal, and they'll appreciate the generosity and may even return the favour by inviting you for dinner later on.

Tip 10: Preserve food!
The other option for surplus food is to preserve it. We collected all our empty glass jars over summer in preparation for an expected surplus of tomatoes as we planned to preserve them in the jars. Unfortunately our tomato harvest under-achieved and we didn't end up with a significant surplus, but we instead used the jars to preserve olives. We are lucky enough to have Greek landlords (Northcote was first settled by Greeks) and a big old olive-tree in the back yard. We picked and cured two 9-litre buckets of olives and preserved them in 30 jars, which should be enough to last us for at least a year.

Our olive tree in the back yard.

Jars of olives which we preserved.

Many fruit, vegies and herbs can be preserved by either drying, jarring or freezing them. I planted heaps of basil this year so we harvested the surplus at the end of the season, chopped it up and froze it, so we have frozen basil ice-cubes to add to pasta sauces, and some basil frozen with olive oil which will serve as a pesto base when we need it.

So there are my tips on eating for free. Many of these tips are accessible to most of us, but the main barriers I see are one's perceptions of what is socially acceptable and unhygienic, and the lack of spare time most of us have and the lack of convenience of these alternative food options. Some research shows that Australians work the highest number of hours in the developed world. Many Australian's are over-worked and/or workaholics and simply want food that is convenient, fast and tasty - not necessarily healthy, or cheap. With so many time-poor Australian's, many don't have the time or energy to even prepare their own food anymore, let alone be growing their own food. This is a shame, I think we should all be working less hours, more people should grow their own food, eat healthier diets and maintain healthier weights, and strategies should be implemented to reduce the astounding wastage of food in this country.