Friday, 29 Mar 2024

Woman eats nothing but petrol station food for five days – what happened to her

For a lot of people, the petrol station is also their nearest shop – selling everything from milk to papers to toothpaste.

It also frequently opens earlier and stays open later than anything else around it. But what if it was your only shop? Could you live entirely off food from there?

Well, Hull Live reporter Anna Riley decided to find out – spending an entire working week surviving of nothing except what she could buy from her local Jet garage.

Over the course of five days her breakfast, lunches and dinners all came from the Londis attached to the petrol station – as well as her snacks and drinks – and while she expected to pay more, the overall cost still shocked her.

"I pretty much expected that I would be shelling out more money for the food sold at a petrol station compared to buying at a supermarket, but I didn't expect it to be so much more," Anna said.

Overall she spent £53.57 for five days' food. But it was the individual items that raised eybrows highest.

"Take a single tin of John West red salmon – it was actually priced at an eye-watering £6.95. That's right. £6.95. I very much doubt that they would be shifting much of their stock when they're charging that," Anna explained.

"My favourite biscuits – chocolate hobnobs – were selling at £2.99 and smoothies were priced up at £3.55."

Even the meal deals cost more – with a sandwich, drink and snack for £4.95, some 65% more than the £3 charged by most supermarkets.

There were also more practical problems.

Anna was trying to be sensible, buying enough so she could save money and wouldn't have to visit the garage three times a day.

But that's not what it's designed for.

"There wasn't a basket in sight for me to put any of my goods in when I was trying to bulk buy," she explained.

"I had my arms overflowing with items, having to go over to the till and dump them on the side before going around again to select a couple more bits."

It also wasn't simple to eat well.

"Try as I might, I couldn't find any healthy food to eat throughout the week from the Jet petrol station," Anna said.

"The only thing that would be remotely good for me was a random bag of carrots nestled next to the sandwiches."

To compensate, Anna tried to stick to food that looked the least junk-like – it didn't work.

"It was a fool's errand. It was carb central with pasties, pies and pizza on offer and I was definitely a salad dodger for the week," she said.

"The closest I came to something of nutrition was a frozen chicken roast that I heated up in the microwave on one of my late shifts. It tasted and looked like aeroplane food."

Here's the full list of what she ate:

Monday

  • Breakfast   – Quaker Oat So Simple porridge pot made by adding boiling water
  • Lunch   – John West Mediterranean salad
  • Dinner   – Margarita pizza and a beer
  • Snacks   – Happy shopper bacon frazzles

The week started off well with a breakfast I would normally eat anyway, so far so good.

But the tuna salad had a sell by date of June 2022 so was certainly not fresh and the only element of salad was a couple of olives and beans, which I didn't really think fit the brief.

I couldn't complain about the margarita pizza or bacon frazzles though, as unhealthy as were. There was a tomato base to the pizza though and cheese has calcium in it, so that's okay, right? Nah, I think I'm just kidding myself.

Even though it was the start of the week, I had been working all weekend without letting my hair down, so I thought I'd pick myself a beer out from the large selection of booze, which was actually much more varied than the food that was on offer.

Tuesday

  • Breakfast   – Quaker Oat So Simple porridge pot made by adding boiling water with a Monster energy can
  • Lunch   – Chicken and bacon salad sandwich, munchies and sparkling water
  • Dinner   – Beef lasagne
  • Snacks   – Orange twirl

Stumbling in to the petrol station at 6.15am and rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I bought breakfast and lunch ahead of my early shift at work and went for another porridge pot and an energy drink to try and wake myself up.

For lunch I went for the meal deal option, but there was hardly much of a sandwich selection to choose from and all of the boxes they were in looked a little worse for wear, beaten around the edges with withered lettuce peeking out of the bread.

It would have been better value to have bought a coke or a Fanta to save the most money, but as I was already having a fizzy drink for breakfast (very bad, I know), I went for sparkling water and chose munchies as my snack option.

I was ravenous as soon as I got to work for some reason, so I switched things up and had my sandwich for breakfast and porridge for lunch, but both tasted fine.

For tea, I had a microwave lasagne and I couldn't complain about that either and the orange twirl was a delight. I recommend anyone to try one. 

All in all it wasn't a bad food day.

Wednesday

  • Breakfast   – Nomadic yoghurt and oat clusters
  • Lunch   – Chicken tikka wrap
  • Dinner   – Macaroni cheese
  • Snacks   – Eat natural almond and sultana bar, bacon rashers, hobnobs

Even though my granola and yoghurt looked healthy, it was packed with sugar and the yoghurt was insipid, so all in all it was a poor start to the morning.

Shame that I bought two really as I would still have to eat another later in the week.

I actually really enjoyed my wrap as it had a nice amount of spice to it and contained actual salad.

The macaroni cheese was just a standard microwave pasta dish, which as always would have tasted better if I made it from scratch.

Thursday

  • Breakfast   – Quaker Oat So Simple porridge pot made by adding boiling water
  • Lunch   – Ginsters Cornish pasty
  • Dinner   – Ahh! Bisto roast chicken dinner
  • Snacks   – Dairy milk bar

Not wanting to have the granola for a second day in a row, I went for porridge to start off my morning and had to closely guard it from my cat, who had taken a real interest in it after naughtily jumping up on the counter.

For lunch I went for a Ginsters Cornish pasty, which actually tasted better than I expected with a couple of dollops of ketchup that I pinched off a colleague, but heating it up in the microwave was my downfall as it made the pastry really soggy and split apart.

So even though the filling tasted alright, the outer crust didn't.

I was on the solo late shift at work and it was a good job I was. My roast chicken dinner took more than 12 minutes to cook! So at least I didn't have to keep any co-workers waiting for the microwave.

When I got it out of the packaging, it looked like airline food and it also tasted like it upon consumption.

It certainly wasn't a carvery boost, but I think it was actually my favourite meal of the week because it had something in it that tasted like real meat and a bit of veg, although the stuffing ball nearly broke my teeth when I bit in to it.

I also really missed the Yorkshire pudding.

Friday

  • Breakfast   – Nomadic yoghurt and oat clusters
  • Lunch   – Rustlers bacon and beef burger with cheese and relish
  • Dinner   – Chicken tikka curry
  • Snacks   – Salt and vinegar crisps

Yet again I did not enjoy the granola, but it was at least edible.

I really wasn't looking forward to the Rustlers burger but it is a classic staple of petrol station food so I had to try it didn't I?

I foolishly put the full burger in the microwave including the bread, which crated a soggy bread bun that then turned rather hard.

I added a cheese slice, along with relish and then had to wait a long time for the bread to cool down before I could even pick it up.

I also thought I'd bought a multipack of crisps, but when I opened them to take them to work I found that it was in fact a big bag, so I looked rather greedy bringing them in.

I didn't eat them all though, promise.

Feeling rather queasy after my burger, I wasn't really looking forward to more stodge in the form of my curry for the evening either.

Anna's final thoughts

All of my meals could either just be eaten as they were, or needed hot water adding or heating up in the microwave, or the oven.

I did zero cooking all week and had no washing up as everything was packaged up – hooray!

But as there was so much food packaging, this surely isn't good for the environment.

Breakfast was pretty easy as what I chose wasn't too dissimilar to what I would normally have, but I wish that I stuck to the porridge alone as the granola and yoghurt was not for me.

But other than the sandwich meal deal I had, the rest of the lunches weren't options that I would normally pick, especially the microwaveable burger. Ugh.

Even though I may have a pizza now and again, I normally always make my evening meal and never make ready meals, so that wasn't something that I was used to.

Even though I'm not the biggest fan of cooking, I did actually miss making a hot meal cooked from scratch with natural ingredients and yearned for a supermarket shop with more options and cheaper prices.

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