I tried to live off ‘Too Good to Go’ hauls for one week. Here’s everything that happened to me (and the very bizarre but delicious leftovers I encountered) when I only ate food from the cut-price, anti-waste app…

My mouth waters as I open the fridge door for breakfast… then I remember what’s on the menu. I take out the packet of jumbo king prawns, pile them high on my plate, and add a packet of lettuce because – well, I’ve got a lot of lettuce to get through.

Welcome to my new diet, for which everything that passes my lips is from Too Good To Go, the clever app that works with stores to sell food off cheaply before it goes out of date. It’s a genius idea with two significant drawbacks: you don’t know what you’re ordering and you’re in a race against time to eat it.

Over the ten years since Too Good To Go launched in the UK, more than 40,000 stores, from supermarkets to independent salad bars, have signed up. Last month its status among Middle England was sealed when Marks & Spencer joined the scheme for the first time, offering £3.80 ‘surprise bags’ of three or four unsold bakery products with an original retail price of at least £10.20 in more than 350 stores nationwide.

The catch, as always, is that you have to claim them one hour before closing time, which often means dashing out in your pyjamas or, worse, half-way through Celebrity Traitors.

Of course, there was once a time when Marks & Spencer’s higher prices were a mark of its desirability. In a cost of living crisis, however, saving money no longer feels like something to be ashamed of, but rather something to shout about.

Marks & Spencer’s collaboration – which means all food sold through the app is half its original price or less – feels like a sensible and sensitive step for the store.

That said, when friends started telling me about the cut-price sushi and bargain Friday night Pizza Express, I felt a bit uncomfortable – shouldn’t people less fortunate than me be getting this food?

Then again this is a business whose primary aim is to tackle food waste, not food poverty.

Retailers end up with 200,000 tons of unwanted or out-of-date food each year, and food waste accounts for a staggering 8 to 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. So even those not on the breadline can feel justified in their Too Good To Go habit.

Finding food through the scheme is simple. You sign up to the app, enter your address and a list of local businesses offering food that day pop up – along with how many bags they have left and the window of time within which you need to collect it. Your payment’s taken when you reserve the food, and on collection you swipe a tab on the app to show you’ve picked it up.

But just how easy is it to grab a bargain? And can you possibly live off food bought only from Too Good To Go for a week? Here’s what happens when I try…

Thursday

Having cancelled our weekly £150 Ocado shop set up for my family of four – my husband, 15-year-old daughter, 13-year-old son and myself – I arrive home at 5pm to start my experiment.

I start by searching for ‘groceries’ on the app – you can also search for ‘baked goods’, ‘vegetarian’ and ‘sweets & snacks’ – and find a Morrisons Daily concession store and Nisa two miles away in my nearest town in Lincolnshire, offering bags I can collect between 6pm and 7.30pm. I’m amazed by the volume of food I’ve acquired for £7.29, even if both bags do contain ready meals, which I never eat.

I’ve suddenly got a lot of lettuce, but still not much substantial enough to feed two teenagers. Perhaps luckily, for him, my husband Chris is away tonight.

When I spot £4.95 surprise bags from Pizza Express, one of our favourite restaurants, available three miles away from 8.15pm, I excitedly snap up two, imagining the delight on my children’s faces as I present them with… one modest slice of garlic bread each and six desserts. Two hours later than normal, at 8.45pm, we sit down to a weird mish-mash of cocktail sausages, curry and a massive Morrisons salad.

WHAT I GET:

MORRISONS DAILY SURPRISE BAG, £4

WOULD HAVE COST: £16.53

2 bags baby leaf salad

2 packets cocktail sausages

1 packet sugar snap peas

1 packet cooked jumbo king prawns

6 royal gala apples

1 cucumber

1 chicken tikka masala and rice ready meal

NISA LOCAL GROCERY SURPRISE BAG, £3.29

WOULD HAVE COST: £13.93

1 tuna pasta bake

1 beef and black bean ready meal with egg fried rice

4 granny smith apples

1 packet of chicken tikka bites

PIZZA EXPRESS, 2 SURPRISE PACKAGES, £4.95 EACH

WOULD HAVE COST: £32.50 EACH

2 garlic breads

2 cheesecakes

2 carrot cakes

2 chocolate cakes

Friday

I breakfast on the prawns from last night’s bag, which are by now eight hours past their ‘use-by’ date. The use-by date tells you when food is no longer safe to eat and differs from a packet’s ‘best before’ date, which simply means the quality might not be as good, or a ‘sell-by’ date which is an internal guide for shop staff.

The Food Standards Agency stresses any food past its use-by date might contain harmful levels of bacteria and shouldn’t be eaten. But I take my chances and insofar as seafood can taste good before 9am, it does.

Still hungry after another bag of slightly limp lettuce and packet of chicken tikka bites for lunch, I can’t resist the two Pizza Express carrot cakes in the fridge, my blood sugar spikes and I throw caution to the wind and order a Costa Coffee bag of goodies to pick up on the school run.

The Costa barista seems delighted I’m taking it off her hands, as are my kids by the sudden influx of sweet treats. I order a grocery bag from my large Morrisons a couple of miles away in the hope of sourcing dinner, but – disaster – am told there’s been an error when I turn up to collect it at 5.45pm. No bag here.

So it’s the Nisa tuna pasta bake and yet more Pizza Express cheesecake for me. (I decide there’ll be a mutiny if I force my family to take part and my bemused husband Chris cooks fajitas for everyone else) before I spot a late evening bag of groceries has become available at Aldi.

I swap my pyjamas for trousers and arrive just before it closes at 10pm, feeling like I’ve won a high adrenaline sport when I’m handed a bumper box of 15 items for just £3.30… Even if I do technically only have two hours to eat much of it and three more bags of lettuce.

WHAT I GET:

COSTA COFFEE SWEET & PASTRY BAG, £2.99

WOULD HAVE COST: £14.05

1 lemon tart

1 chocolate chip cookie

1 chocolate cookie

1 almond croissant

ALDI GROCERY SURPRISE BAG, £3.30

WOULD HAVE COST: £20.23

2 cartons whole milk

Plum tomatoes

2 pink grapefruit

1 bag rocket and baby leaf salad

1 bag baby leaf salad

1 bag iceberg lettuce

Mixed chillis

Radishes

3 packets ham

1 mushroom stir fry

2 chicken caesar wraps

Saturday

What could be better than a Saturday morning croissant? One that isn’t slightly stale, maybe, although the Aldi grapefruit – which I never normally buy – is pink, perfectly ripe and delicious.

While the mystery element of Too Good To Go makes for dubious digestion, I am at least being reintroduced to foods that have fallen off my radar.

Granted, I’m not enamoured by last night’s processed ham, but had the foresight to put the three Aldi packets I’ve ended up with in the freezer so chop some up and add to my salad for lunch.

My family has pasta and bolognaise sauce made from my Aldi plum tomatoes for dinner as I eat the Nisa beef and black bean ready meal, two days past its use-by date – tut tut – but surprisingly tasty. For fibre I add the Aldi mushroom stir fry, minus the ageing mushrooms, at which I draw the line.

In the evening I go to the fridge for the Costa Coffee lemon tart, only to discover it gone. Some elements of Too Good To Go are obviously an easier sell to my family than others.

No order today

Sunday

I’m normally quite prescriptive in my healthy meals, with a big bowl of yogurt, oats and seeds for breakfast and some sort of wholegrain such as brown rice with chicken or fish and kidney beans for lunch.

So a white refined carb chicken caesar wrap filled with mayonnaise would put me off at the best of times, let alone one nearly two days past its best before date.

But I’m so hungry I wolf the Aldi sandwich down at midday, and am taken aback when I actually enjoy it. My taste buds seem to be diversifying.

For dinner I treat myself to a ‘sushi and street food’ bag (which is within its use-by date) from Yo! Sushi, a seven-mile drive from home but offering a covetable 11.45am-1.30pm collection slot, meaning no trudging out after dark. I never normally think to buy sushi, and with my noodles and rice rolls, which come with wasabi, soy sauce and chopsticks, it feels far more exciting than the plain old chicken and potatoes my family eat. At last, bragging rights.

WHAT I GET:

YO! SUSHI AND STREETFOOD BAG, £6.75

WOULD HAVE COST: £16.45

Chilli crisp chicken biangbiang noodles

8 crunchy chicken katsu rolls

8 crunchy chilli salmon and avocado rolls

Soy and wasabi sauce and chop sticks

Monday

After as much ham as I can stand for lunch, I spot a local salad bar offering a bag between 2.30pm-2.45pm and drop everything to get there in time.

It’s worth the effort – the spinach pastry roll and slice of carrot cake I get with it is a welcome snack. Things take another turn for the better late afternoon with a Morrisons bag containing a riot of food, some of it not even about to go off but unsellable, such as loose cans of multipack Coke, a bag of organic carrots with a hole in it and dented tins of tomatoes and baked beans. Fine by me!

I’ve been struggling to get my hands on one of the coveted M&S Too Good To Go bags within an hour’s drive, so order one at a store in London, where Chris is staying overnight for work, and ask him to collect it that evening, via the impressive ‘ask a friend to pick up’ facility that sends him a link he hands to the store.

Foolishly, however, I select a grocery not a pastries bag, and he ends up with four fillets of fish with two-and-a-half hours left on their use-by date in his fridge-free hotel room at 9.30pm. I reluctantly ask him to throw them away, awash with self-loathing for perpetuating the waste problem I was trying to avert and denying someone else food they could have used.

WHAT I GET:

AZZO’S KITCHEN SURPRISE BAG, £4.99

WOULD HAVE COST: £16.25

Salad with beetroot, cabbage, kidney beans, carrot, chillis, hummus and falafel.

Spinach sausage roll

Carrot cake

MORRISON’S GROCERY SURPRISE BAG, £4.95

WOULD HAVE COST: £25.45

7 packets Walkers crisps, loose

2 packets Sicilian lemon pistachio nuts

1 bag organic carrots

Seedless grapes

San Pellegrino sparkling water

2 packets of fresh chives

Loose sprouts

2 cans Pepsi

1 can Coke

1 can Coke Zero

1 can Diet Coke

1 can baked beans

1 can tinned tomatoes

MARKS AND SPENCER GROCERY SURPRISE BAG, £4.99

WOULD HAVE COST: £43.40

2 fillets of sea bass

Nutrient Dense Nutty Super Wholefood

Strawberry & creme chia pudding

Honey roast ham and cheddar cheese sandwich

Triple overnight oats

Chicken caesar salad

Roast chicken and stuffing sandwich

Nacho cheese buffalo slaw

2 basa fillets

Tuesday

My Morrisons non-perishables are a godsend. I have a crushed can of baked beans for breakfast for a blast of protein and carbs. And who knew lemon-flavoured pistachio nuts were so tasty? Or that a bottle of sparkling water at my desk could lend a celebrity glamour to an otherwise humdrum morning?

I boil two-thirds of the bag of sprouts for lunch before they have a chance to go bad, drizzle them with oil and season – then fill up on roast chicken-flavoured crisps late afternoon.

Chris comes home with the salvageable remainders of the M&S bag, and while it might be reckless to eat the nutty wholefood salad and overnight oats 24 hours past their use-by date, I enjoy them both and survive.

No order today

Wednesday

By now I’ve eaten more puddings, snacks and ultra-processed meals than I’d ordinarily get through in a month, but the hand-to-mouth nature of my Too Good To Go diet has forced me to fill up on vegetables, salad and fruit while they’re fresh too.

I think I’m becoming less fussy, even if I do suffer sudden anxiety and take out the boiled egg before I eat the caesar salad for lunch.

This is, it feels, a diet of extremes, requiring nerves of steel, an open mind and split personality, as the crisps, with which I precede my homemade carrot soup for dinner attest. (Am I cheating by adding a stock cube and onion and two slices of bread from the kitchen cupboards? Probably.) While weight loss isn’t my goal, my trousers feel a little looser, if only from all the charging around.

WHAT I GET:

ALDI, GROCERY SURPRISE BAG, £3.30

WOULD HAVE COST: £15.88

Greek salad bowl

Pineapple chunks

Stir fry noodles

Roast chicken salad sandwich

Ham hock with farmhouse cheddar sandwich

Toffee apple

Punnet of strawberries

6 wonky apples

Microwaveable bowl of pilau rice

Bistro salad bag

Thursday

I finish strongly with a bowl of carrot soup from yesterday’s batch for breakfast and sandwiches that taste perfectly fine despite being ‘old’.

The week has – literally – been a mixed bag. The fact I’ve thrown away three inedible packets of salad, one chicken caesar wrap and half the Marks & Spencer order has made me feel uncomfortable. But I’d argue knock-on wastage is a risk for anyone buying evening groceries on Too Good To Go, unless they have a large family willing to dine at 11pm and/or an irrepressible urge for late night lettuce.

But the majority of the £48.46 I’ve spent has gone on food I’ve enjoyed, some I’d never have dreamed of buying otherwise, and I’ll definitely shop here again.

Toffee apple, anyone?

No order today