Arguments against freeganism > Stealing food from the homeless?

It's only fair to take a look at the negative aspects and opinions of freeganism. This is an e-mail sent into a freegan website where they promote the discussion - both negative and positive - of freegansim.

"The only problem I find with "freegans" is that you are taking from those who are truly in need. There are people who have no other choice but to go to a dumpster. they don't even have money to shop at the goodwill. Its like sometime I take clothing to the goodwill and then sometime I put in a dumpster because I know there is someone who needs it. but now we have those who can afford to buy and have decided to take from the truly poor because its in style. You aren't doing anything but taking from the poor and sick who are out there and have nothing but a dumpster to go to. They don't have anything else. They don't have a home to take the "dumpster food" to and wash and cook and make a great gourmet meal. They eat the food right then and there."

This person raises some good points. Being a freegan is by all means a choice. These people may well have money to buy food, which makes it frustratingly middle class. 

One argument in favour of freegansim is the involvment in 'Food Not Bombs':

A loose-knit group of independent collectives, serving free vegan and vegetarian food to others. Food Not Bombs' ideology is that myriad corporate and government priorities are skewed to allow hunger to persist in the midst of abundance. To demonstrate this (and to reduce costs), a large amount of the food served by the group is surplus food from grocery stores, bakeries and markets that would otherwise go to waste. This group exhibits a form of franchise activism.

Although theoretically, dumpster divers could be robbing the homeless of their food, the ultimate goal is to get food waste down to zero. The freegan message is to spread awareness of how wasteful and unsustainable our society is. Arguably supermarket food wastage is one of the least important aspects of this, but it is the easiest to highlight in a way that everyone understands - free, edible food.

From my research into freegan blogs, websites and forums, I have found that the general consensus is that there is a certain amount of dumpster etiquette: it seems that most divers only take a fraction of what is available and they distribute their findings whenever and wherever possible. If the homeless were eating from the same bin then there would be no food left in the bin.