Anyone have good recipes or tips for making pies they like that don't involve whipped cream? Will mixing food coloring into shaving cream mess up the consistency? Looking to make vibrant colored pies with minimal or no food waste.

Shaving foam is the best ingredient to make pies that won't waste food. To colour them, I'd suggest a little food colouring or a little bit of poster paint. They should wash off more easily than other colourants. You can even mix foam with a little bit of custard for a yellow and slightly more sloppy pie, although that would involve using food, but, if you are using it for enjoyment then technically it's not wasted.

If you don't want to use food that's totally fine and up to you. If you are specifically concerned about wasting food, because wasting food is worse than using other resources, you won't be improving the world by doing the same thing with something that isn't food. Covering yourself in crude oil wouldn't use food but would have a significantly worse impact on the world than covering yourself in food.

If you waste corn by covering yourself in it and then throwing it away you've used up corn that could have been eaten. If you grew a field of roses instead of a field of corn and covered yourself in rose petals you've still used up a field that could have been used to grown corn for food. Eating beef from corn-fed cows will use much more corn than directly eating corn and covering yourself in as much corn as you ate. Eating beef is not be considered food waste. What we consider wasteful generally doesn't match the resources used.

You can make pies and slime out of Joint Compound with a little water and food coloring mixed in. All youre wasting is gypsum clay.

I imagine driving to the store probably hurts the ecosystem more than using food for messing (anyone here own a Tesla though?)

I don't think of a pie or a cake to the face as "wasting food." Food is meant to be enjoyed. I used to enjoy eating graham crackers and Cool Whip as a kid before I developed intolerances to gluten and dairy. Now I enjoy the same foods smashed into my face. Whether I consume the foods I'm buying or wearing the food by having it smeared all over my body is me enjoying food that I bought or had bought for me. But that's just my opinion.

This post was geared towards finding alternatives instead of using food, not the ethics of if it's actually wasteful or how damaging my choices are to the world in terms of resources. Thank you to the people who responded with advice. Still going through experimentation but I think the test from my last video turned out great and I'm excited to try more.

On a personal level, I do believe that any food not eaten, especially in large quantities, is wasteful, regardless of the counter balance of driving to the store vs ecosystem cost vs production of other materials (I live in a city so no driving for me anyway). So I try to be mindful of my privilege of being able to afford the supplies to engage in something like this, especially regarding food items, since there were times in my life when I couldn't even afford to buy dinner.