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Felber first realized he could do this in 1994, when he was walking home from work and discovered a café that threw out perfectly good sandwiches. He took them and gave them out to the homeless—but saved a few for himself. Now, he estimates that he gets 80 percent of his food from freeganing.The thing is, Felber isn't doing this to protest capitalism; he's not poor, or living an alternative lifestyle. He's not a gutter punk or someone who'd frequent Burning Man. He makes good money, lives in a nice part of Manhattan, and he won't just eat anything out of a trash can. He only wants the gourmet stuff."Between the fancy sandwich emporium and the supermarkets, you can find everything from high to low-end stuff being thrown out," he told me. "You can get dairy. You can get meat. You can get gourmet food. This one place across from my gym sometimes has sushi." I cringed at the thought of "dumpster sushi."This type of gourmet dumpster diving—call it "yuppie freeganism" if you will—is becoming more popular. The movement has become unhinged from the political, environmental, social reasons, and is more about middle-class Americans saving money. People do it as a form of extreme personal finance, to save a little money in the expensive city of New York so that they can splurge on other things. There are even people who make money off of the things they find in dumpsters. Felber isn't like that. He's the kind of guy who tries to only eat organic, high-end food. If he can get the same things out of high-end grocery stores' trash cans, so what?On MUNCHIES: These Cafés Serve Delicious Casseroles Straight from the Garbage
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Felber—who is health-conscious weightlifter and tries to mostly eat the whole-grain, high-protein foods he finds—has earned some strange glances when he picks through the trash."People see a middle-aged white guy doing this—you can see shock, you can see fear and loathing and disgust."Sometimes they mistake him as homeless, and offer him money or some of their own food. He looks hungry, rifling through the trash like that, in the middle of the sidewalk on the Upper West Side, not far from Lincoln Center.Felber disarms them with a big friendly "hello" and tells them that even though he's not homeless, they should extend their kindness to someone else. "Unlike people who have to go through garbage to survive, [I] have this option."On Motherboard: A New App Wants You to Eat Your Neighbor's Leftover Food
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