"What do insanely poor people buy that ordinary people know nothing about?"

[2naSalit]

2. When I was in my teens and ten cents shy of homeless

I worked in a shoe factory for a while and a cardboard box factory and on a spray can assembly line... paid the rent but nothing else. My former school friends lived near the hovel I rented and they gave me some food every week because all I could afford was oatmeal. I cooked in old food cans and learned to like oatmeal without milk - like I had growing up. I sometimes found enough ingredients to manage a kind of poor-folk spaghetti - only because it was a red sauce with actual pasta. Back then, early 70s, many foodstuffs were pretty cheap. I lied about my age to get my SS card and jobs but I was a couple years below the legal working age.

My best friend became a waitress and brought me leftovers from the diner that she managed to hide until she closed at night too. Had I been discovered for being under age for being on my own I would have been sent to what was then called "reform school" or what we kids called "up the river".

Never ate from a dumpster or garbage can but I probably would have if there was actual food in them that was not covered in rancid grease or other nasty things I can't even imagine.

in later years of poverty I was at least in good friendships with people who had gardens who would share with me even if I didn't have time to help them work the garden as often as I wanted. I have survived for months on potatoes with nothing else.