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Woman who opens food at the grocery store before paying has started a huge debate over shopping ethics

Is it okay to snack on groceries while you shop?

@cecilybauchmann/TikTok

We may never reach an agreement on this.

To snack, or not to snack while grocery shopping? That is the question. At least, that’s been the question for as long as grocery stores have existed: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer through "hanger" and cravings, or take into your arms precious sustenance that fuels you through the shopping trip, so long as you pay for it later.

Apparently, there is very little gray area with this subject. People seem to have very, very strong opinions as to whether or not eating food at the grocery store is appropriate behavior.

Case in point—the heated comments that were ignited after TikTok influencer Cecily Bauchmann filmed herself placing an empty sushi container on the checkout conveyor belt.

“I also opened this in store. I’m sorry, I was so hungry!” Bauchmann explains to the cashier through a giggle.

As she revealed in her caption, this is a regular shopping routine. “Me every time at the grocery store,” she wrote. “Opening food at the grocery store is a normal thing.”

@cecilybauchmann OPENING FOOD IS A NORMAL THING AT THE GROCERY STORE K?🍓✨#relatablemom #relatablemomlife #groceryshopping #groceryhaul #grocerystore ♬ original sound - Cecily Bauchmann

And thus, the war was waged.

“My mama never let us do this and I get lowkey embarrassed when anyone I’m with does this :///” one person wrote.

“Idc how hungry I am, I'd never do this,” another wrote.

One even called out: “It isn’t mine until I pay for it. In my head it’s considered stealing.”

On the other hand, several sided with Bauchmann, saying that they do it themselves when hunger strikes.

“I do that too. If you pay for it at the end then I see no problem,” one person commented.

Many noted that for parents with hungry (and impatient) kiddos, pre-checkout snacking is the only real option for a smooth shopping experience.

“My mom only does this sometimes if we go grocery shopping and my lil siblings really want it,” one person shared.

“I let my child eat a bag of goldfish we hadn’t paid for yet while at Target. I didn’t know this was a controversy?” another seconded.

Even cashiers couldn’t seem to agree.

“When I’m a cashier I get annoyed sometimes when people hand me their trash to scan,” one noted.

Another argued, “I’m a cashier, it’s pretty common lol. I just offer to throw it away for them if it’s empty.”

Still, another wrote, “I worked at a grocery store for 5 years. As long as you don’t eat food that’s cost is by weight and you don’t make a mess it’s fine.”

Zero consensus to be had.

Morals and etiquette aside, what’s the legal stance on this? In the UK, the answer is definitive. It is against the law to snack while you shop. But in the United States, things aren’t so well defined.

According to Betty Wang, attorney and contributor to Find Law, U.S. law requires two elements in order to define an activity as shoplifting. One, taking the item (duh) and two, intentionally evading checking the item out.

Therefore, the argument of “as long as they pay for it later” does somewhat hold up in court, so to speak. However, things change when an item is priced by weight, since you are technically not paying for that which was already consumed.

Also, most stores have individual discretion known as shopkeeper's privilege, meaning that, legally speaking, there really is more of a gray area. Basically, unless you get called out for the snacking by an employee or loss-prevention officer, it’s pretty fair game.

Will there ever be a general consensus on this? Maybe not. We humans have very different moral codes a lot of the time, even when it comes to mundane activities. Sometimes you never know what seemingly harmless thing to you is actually a social faux pas to someone else. But hey, it keeps things interesting.

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community

Planet

Dumpster diver's videos highlight the obscene amount of perfectly good stuff stores throw away

@dumpsterdivingfreegan/TikTok

A dumpster-diving TikTok user is taking stores to task for what they throw away.

Do you ever think about how we live in a world that is perfectly capable of producing enough food and basic necessities for every human on the planet, and yet there are still millions upon millions who don't have enough?

We do. It's weird and inhumane, but it's reality. There are multiple, somewhat complex reasons for this, of course, which don't justify but do explain it. However, the economics and logistics of making sure everyone has what they need don't need to be understood to recognize extreme, blatant, inexcusable waste.

A TikTok user who goes by @dumpsterdivingfreegan shares videos of what she finds in the dumpsters of grocery stores, and it's completely mind-blowing. Even if you already know that stores waste a lot of food, wait until you see what she finds. It's not just food that's at or near its expiration date, though there is a lot of that. She finds toiletries and household items—sometimes by the case, all brand new—just thrown into the dumpster.

Watch:

@dumpsterdivingfreegan
Visit TikTok to discover videos!

Many of us would question pulling perishables from a dumpster, but if it's cold enough outside and you knew they'd been tossed recently, why not? In a logical world, these foods would only be thrown out because there was something wrong with them, but that does not seem to be the case.

In another video, she said she hasn't bought groceries in two years because she's able to get so much from dumpster diving.

@dumpsterdivingfreegan
Visit TikTok to discover videos!

She also says she donates far more than she keeps, and she does leave things behind for other people or homeless people to find. There is always plenty to go around.

She wipes down what she can with disinfectant and hasn't run into any issues with food being bad or anyone in her household getting sick from eating it.

When you see what and how much stores are tossing—perfectly good food that's not even at its best by date yet—it's understandable that she hasn't had to buy groceries. According to Business Insider, grocery stores are responsible for about 10% of the food waste in the United States.

@dumpsterdivingfreegan
Visit TikTok to discover videos!

But it's not just food.

Stores throw away all kinds of merchandise. According to this dumpster diver, many stores have a policy that they throw away cases of product if one item in the case gets broken. She has found cases of wine where just one bottle was broken. And check out this case of perfectly good plants that some people paid good money for:

@dumpsterdivingfreegan
Visit TikTok to discover videos!

And if perfectly good plants being tossed isn't enough to move you, how about toilet paper? That's right. The precious commodity that people were waiting in ridiculous lines for and rationing due to hoarding-induced-scarcity. But not just any toilet paper! The environmentally friendly bamboo kind that costs far more than toilet paper should, tossed into a dumpster for reasons none of us can guess.

@dumpsterdivingfreegan
Visit TikTok to discover videos!

The irony of a store that sells all kinds of eco-friendly items throwing so much into landfills unnecessarily is enough to make your brain explode.

Why don't they donate this stuff instead of throwing it away? Yes. That is the million-dollar question.

Some stores do donate some or most of their overstocked or close-to-due-date items. But as we see here, the habit is not universal, it might vary from location to location, and some stores actually have policies against it for whatever reason. It seems reasonable in the modern world to expect perfectly good items to not end up in landfills when people are in need of them and when our Earth is already dealing with too much trash. It makes no sense.

You probably have dozens of questions for @dumpsterdivingfreegan and she answers tons of them in her videos and comments. I highly recommend perusing her TikTok channel, where she's really an open book about money and dumpster diving. While it's seriously shocking what she finds, it's equally interesting how she lives her life and organizes her finances.

And it will definitely motivate you to find out if stores in your area throw out merchandise and to encourage them to find a more humane and environmentally conscious way to process excess, because the waste in these videos is simply obscene.

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culture

Wellness

Trader Joe's manager displays superhuman patience with anti-mask protesters trying to break into store

Mapleton S/YouTube

Nearly a year into the deadliest pandemic in a century, the U.S. is still battling not only the virus, but Americans living in denial of reality as well.

Take this video of a group of anti-maskers who stood in front of a Trader Joe's entrance and tried to argue that they had every right to shop there without masks. The woman narrating the video states that they have "a right to commerce" (they don't—there's literally no such right), that Trader Joe's doesn't have the right to require masks (they do—it's their store), that the mandate to wear masks in public places can't be enforced because it's not a real law (it can—), and that they were not there to demonstrate, but just to buy groceries (umm, right).

The manager, to his credit, did what he could to calmly talk with these people while also making it clear that they were not going to enter the store without a mask.

"The point you're trying to make isn't going to be made with us," he said. "It can be made with your government...I am not here to debate policy. I totally respect for you to think anything you want to think...my job, as manager of the store is to enforce the mandate, whether you believe in it or not."

The anti-maskers complained when the manager allowed masked customers to enter the store, asking why they were allowed to shop. The feigned innocence and insincere bafflement is really something. The demonstrators blocked the entrance to the store, preventing other shoppers from entering, then sent some of their group around to the back of the store when they found out that mask-wearing customers were being let in through the back door.

The whole thing is incredibly stupid, but the Trader Joe's employees standing their ground with superhuman patience and diplomacy are incredibly impressive.

(Check out the subtle shade moment at 1:52 when a masked shopper gives a sassy little foot kick as she enters the store.)

TJ 1 9 21 Salem ORwww.youtube.com

The Oregon Health Authority has made it very clear that the state's mask mandate is binding for all. In the Q & A section of its website, the question of whether there are even any health exemptions is addressed:

"If a person with a disability cannot wear a mask, face covering or face shield, a place of public accommodation, such as a business or space open to the public, will need to work with that person to provide a reasonable modification. Some common reasonable modifications are: free curbside pick-up, free delivery or an appointment by phone or video. A reasonable modification does not include allowing a customer inside without a mask, face covering or face shield."

Also, governors have the right to enact emergency powers, so yes, a public health mandate is legally binding during a public health emergency.

In addition, Trader Joe's is a private business, which has the right to enact and enforce its own rules for shopping there. We've lived with "No shoes, no shirt, no service" signs for decades without demonstrators claiming that they have every right to shop barefoot. Shopping at a specific grocery store is not a constitutional right. These people aren't just annoying, they're wrong about everything they are saying. They're also putting others at risk by refusing to wear a mask in public.

This isn't hard. The science behind mask mandates has been clear for many months at this point, and further backed up by data from places that tracked the virus before and after mask mandates were implemented. But the key to success is compliance. If people would just wear them because it's the right thing to do to protect everyone and to enable us to live some semblance of normal life without killing millions, that would be great. The irony is that mask mandates only become necessary when people don't do that.

The U.S. is drowning in COVID-19, and these people are flipping over the lifeboats because they're uncomfortable. And the entitlement of believing a business has to serve you when that's what you're doing? Ridiculous. Good for these Trader Joe's employees for not backing down.

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coronavirus

Sustainability

Canadian IGA grocery store sells organic produce and honey from its own rooftop garden

IGA/YouTube

Rooftop gardens have become popular features of high rise apartments, but a grocery store in Canada has taken the idea a big step further.

According to Canadian Grocer, the 25,000 square foot rooftop garden of IGA Extra Famille Duchemin grocery store, created in 2017 in Montreal, produces about 35 types of produce that the store harvests and sells themselves. The certified organic crops include kale, lettuce, carrots, green beans, eggplant, garlic, tomatoes and spinach, and store co-owner Richard Duchemin says the produce sells "very well." The garden also includes beehives for honey.

The garden is even designed in the shape of the letters IGA, making quite a striking visual from the air. Duchemin told the Montreal Gazette that he hoped his store's rooftop would serve as an example for other grocery stores to follow.

"Why don't supermarkets plant vegetables on their roofs? Some restaurants have little boxes where they grow herbs," he said. "We pushed it further because we know we're able to sell what we produce here."

Check it out:

IGA - Frais du toityoutu.be

The garden isn't just green with plants; it's also environmentally maintained, getting its irrigation water from the store's dehumidification system—water which would have been discarded anyway. The lush outdoor space also serves as a habitat for birds and bees.

This hyperlocal approach to farming can also reduce the environmental and economic costs of transporting produce. Though the rooftop garden can't serve all demand for produce, especially in a region with a limited growing season, it does help. And how fresh would your produce be if it was literally just picked an hour or two ago?

"People are very interested in buying local," Duchemin told the Gazette. "There's nothing more local than this."

Good News Movement shared a photo of the rooftop garden on Instagram, and people are loving it.

See on Instagram

The Instagram post quoted Duchemin, saying,"Not only does a green roof help regulate the temperature of the building below it, saving energy, but it also feeds into consumer demand for food with a smaller carbon footprint."

Wouldn't it be incredible if every grocery store grew its own produce on site? Is this a glimpse of the future?

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environment

Planet

Greenpeace just named the best and worst grocery stores for the planet.

Since plastic was first invented in 1907, over 8.3 billion tons has been produced, of which 79% has either wound up in a landfill or the natural environment.

About a third of this plastic are single-use products such as straws, cutlery, and shopping bags. Plastic bags now kill over 1000,000 marine animals a year and the Great Pacific garbage patch has grown past 1.6 million square kilometers.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. (a thread) pic.twitter.com/YY1ns7Phkj
— samantha ✰ (@_sammy_wilson_) June 18, 2019

Unfortunately, plastic production on Earth is showing no signs of slowing. According to The Guardian, plastic production is set to skyrocket over the next 10 to 15 years, with over 360 million tons produced in 2018 alone.

One way we can work to decrease the amount of plastic produced is to change how and where we shop. Greenpeace has taken the lead by ranking 20 of America's top supermarket chains in terms of how they're fighting the plastic crisis.

Unfortunately the news hasn't been positive. Across the board, "U.S. supermarkets are failing to adequately address the plastic pollution crisis they are contributing to," Greenpeace said in a statement.

"Grocery retailers across the country sell obscene amounts of products in throwaway plastics every single day, yet none of them are acting with the urgency needed to address the pollution crisis they're causing," Greenpeace Plastics Campaigner David Pinsky said in a statement.

"Not only do these companies have the resources to reimagine their stores with refill and reuse systems, they can use their buying power to pressure consumer goods companies like Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and Unilever to act as well," Pinsky continued. "The question is whether retailers will take responsibility for this mess, and act."

The supermarkets were ranked on a scale of 1 to 100, and the top performer, Aldi, received just a 34.6. Aldi achieved a top score by instituting several initiatives that most others do not: a specific plastic reduction target, a more comprehensive plastic reduction plan, greater transparency, and commitments to implement reuse and refill systems.

Here are the top and bottom 5 supermarkets according to Greenpeace.

Top 5:

1. Aldi

2. Kroger

3. Albertsons

4. Trader Joe's

5. Sprouts

Bottom 5:

16. Giant Eagle

17. WinCo Foods

18: Meijer

19. Wakefern

20. H.E.B.

Greenpeace doesn't just want to prompt supermarkets into taking action, it believes that's our job as well.

After learning about your local store's record, it asks you to take the scorecard to your supermarket to show the store's ranking to the store manager. Greenpeace also asks you tell the manager that "customers want to see less single-use plastics and more refill and reuse options."

Greenpeace also suggests you take photos of ridiculous single-use plastic packaging and post it on social media at #BreakFreeFromPlastic.

We really need to do something about this NOW!!! Also: can we all just fucking boycott coffee pods? #breakfreefromplastic #nospaceforwaste https://t.co/PZWLo2hIpy
— E (@AvalosLiz) June 20, 2019

.@Nestle you have created a #plasticmonster, end your reliance on throwaway plastic packaging and immediately phase out single-use plastics across your supply chains. #breakfreefromplastic
— ZairaLu (@ZairaLuVi) June 19, 2019

Everyone should have access to fresh food that is not stored in toxic packaging! No community should be polluted or exposed to toxic chemicals because of cheap packaging. Help us unwrap the myths about the "safety" of food packaging! #UNWRAPPED #breakfreefromplastic pic.twitter.com/AmoCSeIjAQ
— Plastic Pollutes (@PlasticPollutes) June 13, 2019

Even if our local supermarket isn't doing all it can to reduce its plastic footprint, we can all improve by shopping with reusable bags, purchasing loose fruit and vegetables, and shopping at farmers' markets when possible.

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Heroes

A food bank volunteer and her coder friend figured out how to feed thousands of people.

True

Anyone can have a good idea, but it takes a special person to follow through. Maria Rose Belding is one of those people.

While volunteering at a food pantry, Maria Rose noticed that huge amounts of good food were being tossed out at the end of every day. The food pantry couldn’t share those resources with neighboring towns because — even in the internet age — it was incredibly difficult to get hold of the necessary people in order to do so. Maria Rose was only in the eighth grade, but this flawed system didn’t sit well with her.

Years later, she found herself in a position to do something about it. Take a look:

You see, we have enough food in this country to feed everyone. Still, there are about 49 million Americans who are food insecure.

"If we had a crisis that was affecting one in six Americans, that was strongly associated with not finishing high school, with not going to college. That was strongly associated with bad health outcomes, with mortality, with incarceration, with behavioral health issues. If we had a crisis that was doing that to one in six of us, we would be freaking out," Maria said.

"And that’s exactly what hunger is. It’s not going to be easy, and it’s not going to be quick, but we can fix this. And we should."

All images via Starbucks. Used with permission.

She points out that the effects of food insecurity — not being able to rely on access to affordable and nutritious foods — go far beyond an individual’s health.

"You can’t strategize about getting a job, about finding higher-paying employment, about continuing your education, about taking care of your kids. You can’t think about any of those things if you haven’t eaten anything today," she said.

Knowing how deeply the food was needed and then watching surplus donated food get thrown away was mind-blowing to Maria Rose. She knew there had to be a better way.

Maria Rose enlisted her coder friend Grant Nelson to help her build a nationwide database for food banks: MEANS.

The premise is simple: Food pantries and restaurants — really, all places with extra food — indicate in the database excess food that they have available. Nonprofits in the area are alerted via text or email and are able to go pick up the much-needed food and get it to hungry people.

What’s incredible is that Maria Rose saw a problem and figured out a way to do something about it. Her actions transformed the way food banks are able to communicate with the rest of the community. MEANS makes it possible for so many more people to eat — a basic necessity and human right.

Today, MEANS works with over 800 organizations in 45 states.

Thousands of pounds of food that would have otherwise been trashed are being redistributed every month thanks to MEANS.

A single person had an idea and acted on it and revolutionized a process that has a direct effect on so many people’s lives. It started with her deciding to take action. Imagine what else we can accomplish.

What to do with blemished or expired food? This restaurant is selling it.

What are the chefs at Restlos Glücklich serving today? Waste.

Food waste that is.

This Berlin restaurant is giving blemished ingredients a second chance by turning them into exquisite, mouthwatering meals.

Chef Daniel Roick holds a creation made from discarded groceries. Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images.

Restlos Glücklich (which loosely translates to "completely happy") works closely with an organic grocery store chain to procure its ingredients.

Most of the bread and produce they receive is imperfect and might otherwise languish on the shelf. And incorrect deliveries can result in accidental surplus, so the restaurant puts that to use too.