Have you ever been so poor you ate food out of the garbage?

Yes but I wouldn't say it was necessarily a result of being "poor". Moreso a product of abuse. My bio dad sucked and not only made enough that I didnt get free or reduced lunch as a kid, but also wouldn't buy food for the house or put any money on my lunch account.

I remember all through elementary school I would sneak over to the cubbies during the schoolday and sneak little things out of classmates lumchboxes. I always felt really bad and was super scared of getting caught because I was such a quiet kid, so it would usually be like a single packet of fruit snacks or a banana that I was eating for lunch. Sometimes I couldn't get away from people enough to sneak into lunch boxes, and on days I was super hungry I would find an excuse to linger over near the garbage can and pull out whatever was on the top tray that had just been thrown in. Usually it was whatever fruit or vegetable we were required to get with lunch when we bought it at school that the other kids left on their tray, but sometimes it would be like a couple of chicken nuggets or a little handful of mashed potatoes. Kids threw away a craaaaazy amount of food in elementary school, but I didn't really understand germs at the age and was scared that if I went further down to grab anything that'd been touched by something else in the garbage can I would get super sick and die.

I think that got a little bit harder by Middle School. There was one large Central garbage can that we all threw our lunches in, and the lunch monitors all stood near it. But my middle school also had an "extras" table where you could throw out anything you didn't want. But after the first couple of months of me taking stuff off of it every, single day, the lunch monitor started to notice and I got called to the counselor's office and they were asking a bunch of questions about my home life and how much food we had in things like that. And I was like 11 at that point and old enough to know that if I answered wrong I would probably be put into foster care. So I lied my way out of a phone call home (which would have had really awful results) and stopped chilling near the garbage cans and extras table 😂

As a result I ended up super hungry throughout most of sixth and seventh grade, until I met my best friend who was a freaking angel and alwaaaays shared her food. If I got lunch detention (which was common, because homework was really hard to get done in a abusive household) she would save half of her lunch for me and bring it to me on the bus after school. She never asked about my home life after that first time, and when she saw it made me uncomfortable she just dropped it, and from then on began pushing half of her lunch over to me without saying anything about it

I do remember one time in 6th grade though where I had been sick for three days with literally no food in the house but mayonaise and wilted lettuce, and when I came back to school I was starving but it was so soon after being called to the office that I saw the lunch attendants staring at me when I tried to approach first the garbage and then the extras table before school started (they offered breakfast as well as lunch). So I had to turn around and walk back the table and sit down like I wasn't hungry and had eaten breakfast at home. And our cafeteria was two levels, with a platform along the outsides of the room that the 8th graders got to sit on above us all. And I remember someone shouting, a folded omelet plopping down on the floor in the middle of the cafeteria on the lower floor I was on, and a bunch of eighth graders above me laughing. And it stayed there for a good half an hour before the bell rang for us to go to class, and I snatched it up and ate it on my way to my first period. THAT probably should have genuinely made me super sick, but nothing ever came of it.

I will forever be an advocate that all lunches at school should be free to all children. It makes ZERO sense that prisoners get their meals paid for, but underaged children who are in the care of the school all day long, and are required to be there by law, do not get free food. Its unacceptable that there are still open in the exact same situation and everything. As an elementary and middle schooler I felt super grown up because of all that I lived through, but I wasnt a grown-up. I look at middle schoolers now and see actual babies. And I don't understand why we aren't taking care of those babies in every way we can.

In my early 20s, I was homeless or on the brink of homelessness a few times, so dumpster diving became pretty normal.

I would dig through discarded fast food bags in order to get any loose fries or sauce packets I could get, I'd go through hotel trashcans in order to get leftover slices or uneaten pizza crust, and I'd eat stale popcorn from near the exits of movie theatres. Loose bags of chips, discarded fruit from school lunches, and half-eaten pastries from outside coffee shops were like delicacies for me

I still remember one of the happiest moments of those years was when I found a still-warm stack of syrup-soaked pancakes in a to-go box outside an IHOP.

I worked in various fast-food joints throughout this time as well, so whatever free food I could sneak away I totally did. The chicken nuggets were the best because they were still good when cold

Yes

I've always been fortunate enough to have always had food and housing. Of course that could change in an instant and, if it did, I'm not sure what I would do or how I would cope.

So, a hat tip to all who have endured such harships and survived. May your hard times be over.

I have turned to nature, search for fruit trees, greens or algea and sometimes I took things that were hanged out of the bins, but not in the garbage.. a few months I had a very low income, I made an arrangement to water somebody's farm once a week and every time I could take few vegetables

Geez, I'm sorry.

I remember when my fraud of a boss convinced me I had a job with a future and then fired me from it. I had to go to being a host at a restaurant. If it weren't for the training meals, I would have gone hungry. My coworkers would eat the food that customers ordered but canceled and I would get so jealous, but what was I gonna do about it.

i have been homeless before . you do what you have to . too survive.. mark

No. though I wasn't far from it. When I left school I was squatting in a disused flat, all the furniture I had in there I got from skip bins. And there was a place an hour away that sold vegetables and fruit that was rejected by the supermarkets at a $5 a trolley full.

No

I had some starvation days due to no food but....where we lived, there were no garbage cans worth digging 😂😂 anyway lol

No,
I've never eaten dumpster food only by the grace of God. I'm sorry that you had to do that especially at work where it could cause such a stigma. If this happens again pls try your local food bank.

Growing up we were food scarce but I didn't even know until I was a little older how bad that it was.
My mom was very prayerful and once I do remb that we went to the grocery store ( I didn't know that we didn't have any money)
We bought very little then we walked outside and right next to our car (like someone put it there) was a totally stacked full basket of groceries.
We waited. We looked around. It was late at night. We couldn't find anyone near so we put everything in our car and went home and ate for weeks from that food.

Once. An unopened drink. Oh, and a discarded cheese and melon tray worth about $30.

I've done some desperate measures to survive but never that.

Hope you don't have to do that anymore.

No i haven't. I did have to live in my truck though.

Thankfully, no

Nope.

No.