Eating in the U.S. is cheap, and people in the U.S. spend less than 10 percent of their disposable income on food, according to the ERS.

Still, the advocacy group Food Not Bombs estimates more than 30 million people in the U.S. go hungry on a regular basis every year.

At the same time, the U.S. spends an estimated $1 billion a year to dispose of the excess food, which ends up contributing to leachate and methane formation in landfills.

Many people are growing wise to this overabundant waste and are learning to live off it.

Dumpster diving, or the practice of grabbing goods out of trash cans, is growing in popularity in the U.S.

Some people take food and nonfood items out of dumpsters to save money or to make a strong political statement.

Others do it because they have to because inevitably, some people don’t have enough money to feed themselves.

To many, the thought of getting food out of a dumpster is preposterous, but restaurants, bakeries, cafeterias and grocery stores around the country toss out loads of perfectly good food every day.

Baked goods can’t be sold after their arbitrarily imposed “sell by” date but often are not even stale yet.

Produce won’t sell with even small bruises or cosmetic blemishes, but people usually can still use some or most of the discarded piece of fruit or vegetable.

Perhaps the practice of dumpster diving dates back to our foraging roots, when we had to hunt down and search for everything we ate.

But perhaps it’s more than that — our culture of consumerism and germaphobia has taught us to throw anything and everything away instead of salvaging, and supermarkets have taught us food is only safe if it looks pretty.

Many people think these wasteful habits are fundamentally wrong, and dumpster diving provides the outlet for effectively living off the unnecessary waste of the larger part of society.

It’s free, direct recycling that puts discarded items back into good use, and it laughs in the face of the capitalistic mantra of unstoppable production.

Of course, dumpster diving has its own downsides.

Certain communities are much more friendly toward the practice than others, and in many places, the practice is illegal.

Since dumpsters are private property, going into them is considered trespassing, and while many owners and employees simply look the other way, not all of them do.

Also, sometimes food is thrown away for good reason, and people can get sick from eating it.

People need to be very discriminating and careful with food taken from the trash, and cooking the food before eating it is recommended.

Perhaps one day the U.S. as a society will stop unnecessarily wasting so much.

Until that happens, though, there will always be a strong subculture of people who chose to live off of our culture’s waste stream, whether the practice is legal or not.

Liz Kersjes is the State News opinion writer. Reach her at kersjese@msu.edu.