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You'll Definitely Want To Eat These Foods Rescued From Dumpsters

Often, edible foods are discarded because there’s confusion surrounding the expiration dates.
By 

Business Reporter, HuffPost

Every year, about one-third of the world’s food gets lost or discarded. And quite a bit of it is perfectly intact, healthful and something you’d want to sink your teeth into.

To demonstrate just how delectable thrown out food can be, photographer Aliza Eliazarov set out to take pictures of fruits, vegetables and other items in dumpsters around Brooklyn and Harlem, New York.

Often, edible foods are discarded because there’s confusion surrounding the expiration dates or they don’t meet the industry’s “beauty standards.”

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Eliazarov photographed the foods and modeled the shoots after 17th-century food art.

“I used food headed for the trash and made it art,” Eliazarov told The Huffington Post. “My goal for the project was to show the beauty in the food that was being wasted.”

All of the food was consumed after.

Eliazarov’s “Waste Not” series will be on display through July 4 at theFOVEA Exhibitions in Beacon, New York.

Aliza Eliazarov
Bread is one of the most wasted food products in the country. Americans buy 750 million loaves a year and 25 percent of it ends up in the trash, according to Sustainable America. (Even though there are plenty of things to do with stale bread). All of the food pictured was rescued from curbside trash outside of a market and bakery in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.
Aliza Eliazarov
Because expiration dates aren’t uniform, consumers are often left confused about how to interpret the information and throw out food that’s perfectly edible. “Sell by” dates, for example, indicate to retailers when they should sell something so that customers have a reasonable amount of time to consume a product. When Eliazarov visited a distribution facility dumpster in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, she found unopened bottles of fresh juices. They hadn’t expired, but the “best by,” “use by” and “sell by” dates kept them from reaching supermarket shelves.
Aliza Eliazarov
In the U.S., 26 percent of all produce gets discarded because it doesn’t live up to the industry’s “beauty standards.” The produce and flowers pictured were retrieved from the trash outside of Union Market in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Aliza Eliazarov
These tomatoes were rescued from the Garden of Eden Market in Harlem, New York. This stands in contrast to France, where throwing out food that's nearing its expiration date was declared illegal for supermarkets back in February. Instead, stores have to donate or compost the goods.
Aliza Eliazarov
Eliazarov rescued sorbet from the trash outside of a Key Foods Market in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The photographer decided where to search for foods based off of the "Freegan" directory. The freegan movement aims to reduce waste by retrieving discarded food and other goods. Freegans typically coincide their searches with when stores are closing and preparing to take out the trash.

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