To be fair, "freegans" and "dumpster divers" do this all the time. It's common practice, given that grocery stores will pull fruits and vegetables for having a tiny bad spot. Or a box of cereal being 1 day past the pull date. It's not bad, they just can't sell it. I don't think this points toward a hurricane, I think it's pretty regular behavior for these folks. (They even have websites to share hot spots and compare booty.) Someone with a camera just decided to make a big deal of it because of the hurricane.
If grocery stores were less wasteful and didn't throw out perfectly good stuff, it wouldn't happen. They used to donate stuff to food banks and homeless shelters, but if someone got sick (even if it wasn't the cause), they would get sued. Our church used to have a big table of day old bread and other nice baked goods - rolls, bagels and such - every Sunday, available free for the taking. That would be a good use for stuff that is nearing its pull date. Not the garbage bin.
Another reason: giving away stuff "dilutes" your brand name and lowers its worth in peoples' eyes.
An example of this is the brand name fancy shoes that expensive department stores throw out. If they need to be thrown out, they make the employees destroy the shoes rather than give them to a homeless shelter... because it would cheapen their name in the eyes of the people that shop there. (In my eyes, giving them away to the needy would be a big plus. I personally would be more likely to buy them. But I guess the bean counters think differently.)
I'm not a socialist, I'm just against waste. If you have a watermelon with a bad spot, cut it out and chop up the rest and sell it. Or set up a way to give these things to charity rather than throw them away. But I guess I live in a different world than the corporate bean counters.
