Too Good To Go? One Student’s Quest to Dodge Scurvy on Discounted Pastries

Can a student survive an entire week on Too Good To Go bags? In St Andrews? That was the question I asked myself. Armed with a budget, dreams of doughnuts, and a vague concern about vitamin C deficiency. The following week was a culinary adventure or cautionary tale, I’ll let you decide, involving too many carbs, a ruined tote bag and a close brush with scurvy.

Too Good To Go is an app that lets you buy leftover food from cafes and restaurants for a couple of pounds. You pay a few quid, pick up a “surprise bag” and hope it’s not five identical tuna sandwiches (again).

Day 1: Doughnuts and Delusion

It began, as all good stories do, with six Krispy Kreme doughnuts. My mum has been very open about her many Too Good To Go victories. “It’s genius! I don’t know why everyone isn’t using it,” she would say, as she dragged the third box of Brussel sprouts and stale pancakes into the kitchen.

While I was back home for reading week, however, she dragged me to pick up her bag from Krispy Kreme — these doughnuts may very well have changed my entire worldview. While a half dozen doughnuts would usually set you back around £15, she managed to snag them for £4.95, (that’s about 82p per doughnut!). Practically a heist. This wasn’t your typical Too Good To Go end-of-day “here’s what’s left” scenario. Instead, we were just asked what doughnuts we wanted, no different from the normal experience.

This is where my master plan was born — spend a week living off Too Good To Go bags. How hard can it be? In hindsight, the doughnuts were probably not a great starting point; I believed that this would be easy.

Day 2: South Street, Saturated Fats, and Self-Indulgence

Back in St Andrews, I embarked on my first solo mission: The Newport Bakery on South Street.

For £4.60, I walked away with a flaky feast: two pain au chocolats, a brownie, a sausage roll and a macaroni pie. Feeling generous and perhaps a little overconfident, I shared the spoils with my parents for their journey home. One pastry for my mum, the sausage roll for my dad, and the rest for yours truly. The brownie became lunch. The macaroni pie was dinner. The day-old pain au chocolat greeted me the next morning. No word of a lie, the best pastry I’ve ever had.

Life was easy, spirits were high. My arteries were probably less impressed…

Day 3: Grocery Ghosting

Full of carbs, sugar, and optimism, I turned to Morrisons in search of actual groceries. You know, vegetables, protein and such. I dreamed of carrots, lettuce, a piece of fruit perhaps. A little dramatic you could say but it had been well over a day since I had last eaten anything green, give me a break.

Morrisons, in their infinite generosity, responded by cancelling my order at midday. Not ideal but I soldiered on. Vitamins were still in my future I was sure of it; I had an Aldi bag lined up for later that evening.

Except Aldi cancelled too. At 7 pm. Two hours before I was set to go pick it up. I managed to source some pasta from my flatmate and called it a day. Oh well, surely scurvy can’t set in in two days. Hopefully…

Day 4: To Good To Wake For?

Enter: the holy grail of Too Good To Go, Greggs.

£2.59 secured me two yum yums, four sausage rolls, four scones and two chicken baguettes. I ate Greggs for every meal that day. Breakfast? Yum Yum. Lunch? Chicken baguette. Dinner? Sausage roll. Healthy? Absolutely not.

Sadly, even Greggs was not without its flaws. The pickup time was 7 am, admittedly not ridiculously early but I am NOT a morning person. I cannot stress this point enough — I am not convinced anything is worth waking up at 6 am for: not 9 am lectures, not Bubble run club, not even May Dip. But a sack of Greggs pastries? The jury’s still out.

Day 5: Aldi’s Revenge

Riding the high of the Greggs experience, I eyed up a Starbucks bag for £2.50. Jackpot! Or so I thought… Everyone I had spoken to had told me I had to get one from Starbucks. But each time I tried they were sold out. Obviously, I was late to the Too Good To Go party. So safe to say my expectations were high. Naturally, the bag was cancelled.

Thankfully, Aldi came through this time — though perhaps they shouldn’t have. Although I can’t be too cynical about it, after five days of carbs and cancelled bags, I finally managed to score some vegetables. Six corn on the cobbs and three bags of cherry tomatoes, to be exact. Who could ask for anything more? The rest of the haul included a kilo of sprouting potatoes, a couple of rogue Frubes, two cartons of milk, three packets of ham, and six eggs. It's undoubtedly good value for money, you wouldn’t think there was anything to complain about.

Wrong. I would question what Aldi considers to be “too good to go.” I would argue that broken eggs and leaking milk are perfectly fine to go. Aldi would disagree. This led to me standing at the bus stop wondering why my bag felt wet, the answer: the punctured carton of milk lying at the bottom of it. Fortunately, I was able to bin it before making my way back home. Unfortunately, in my haste to get rid of the milk, I had missed the three broken eggs that were slowly oozing yolk all over the place. Not ideal.

The 9:30 pm pick-up meant I got to enjoy this biohazardous surprise while waiting for a bus in the dark. Who needs safety and convenience when you’ve got sprouting spuds? All in all, it wasn’t a complete disaster. Okay, I may have had to toss my favourite bag but at least I dodged scurvy. What is it they say? A corn on the cobb a day keeps the doctor away?

Day 6: The Morning I Lost to a Mushroom

On Saturday morning I managed to secure a Hotel du Vin breakfast bag, a luxurious £4 splurge that felt almost sophisticated compared to my week of carb-fueled chaos. It came with an impressive selection of pastries: a pain au chocolat, a croissant, and a pain aux raisin. Alongside this was a mysterious box of hot breakfast food which I opened with cautious optimism. Inside: black pudding, bacon, a grilled tomato... and a single, slightly sweaty mushroom, tucked in the corner like it belonged there.

Now, I’m sure this would’ve been a dream for most people. A full, hearty breakfast, lovingly assembled for under a fiver. But there was one small issue: everything in the box — the tomato, the bacon, even the black pudding — tasted unmistakably of mushroom. Not because of some inventive culinary twist but simply because it had all been sitting in the same steamy polystyrene box. Great.

It’s not a complaint, per se. It was clearly decent food and if you’re someone who likes mushrooms, it probably would have been a delight. I just happen to think they taste like damp sadness. So while I appreciated the variety, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d been ambushed by fungus at breakfast.

The Verdict

In total, I spent £28.03. After cancellations, just £19.40. For comparison my average weekly shop costs about £25 so on paper, I saved money. In reality, I had to buy backup food for when the bags flaked on me and across the course of the week, I spent over 4 hours running around town trying to piece together enough food to make a meal. Those were four hours I could have spent writing an essay, doing readings or sitting in the Rule saying “I need to lock in.”

I gave up after five days. Between the unpredictable pickups, the late-night bus waits and the egg-soaked groceries, I realised that convenience and nutrition matter just as much as cost. While Too Good To Go may be god’s gift to earth for the occasional sweet treat, I would not recommend trying to live off it. Unless you particularly fancy a week of beige meals, broken eggs and a lingering fear of scurvy.