We visited a dozen stores over several nights last week to check what was being thrown away and discovered hundreds of pounds worth of food dumped.

At a Sainsbury’s superstore next to the Dome in Greenwich, South East London – the chain’s flagship “environmentally-friendly” shop with its own wind turbines – staff said it was standard practice to throw away food before its sell-by date. And they’re not even allowed to take it home.

One said: “Someone just stands there and throws it into the skip. We wish we could buy it – but we’re not allowed.”

Pointing to meat on the “reduced” shelf, he added: “Come midnight, anything that hasn’t been sold will get taken off the shelf... if it’s out of date it will be logged on the computer, put against our losses, then in the skip.”

Four-pint bottles of milk with nine days still to run had been thrown out, along with nine cans of cola with a date stamp of April 2009.

I know a few homeless people who depend on food thrown out by supermarkets to survive. Ridiculously though they risk persecution and harassment when they try to retrieve it.

Such a waste.

The really sad -- immoral, in my eyes -- thing is when stores deliberately spoil the food before they put it in the dumpster, so nobody will take it -- crushing and destroying it, or pouring something non-edible over it, things like that.

As John Waterman said,

homeless people who depend on food thrown out by supermarkets to survive

Where I live, the homeless set up "camps" in what ever area is near a supermarket, but secluded from the public. Many employees will give the throw-aways directly to the homeless (in secret of course)

The supermarkets in Portland save the food for the people from "Food Banks" to come and pick it up.