FOOD fans are racing to grab loads of sweet treats and refreshing beverages for pennies – but all is not as it seems.
With the cost-of-living crisis soaring, millions of Britons are on the lookout for bargain deals and money-saving hacks to help with their weekly food shop.
Laura Griffiths, from Swansea, is no exception – but fortunately, she's claimed to have found a site where you can bag various items for under a quid.
The retailer, Approved Food, offers anything you might need for your house, such as cleaning products, as well as groceries, alcohol and bits for your beloved pet.
According to Approved Food, these products come for surplus and ''food that is either near or just passed its 'best before' date''.
This, in turn, helps you save cash and tackle food waste, with the brand claiming you could be saving a whopping £700 every year.
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Naturally, Laura was pleasantly surprised when discovering the site, sharing the news on Extreme Couponing and Bargains UK Group on Facebook.
''Approved Food has a lot of 1 pence items right now,'' she revealed in the post.
''Dates are all best before and perfectly fine to eat/drink!''
The delighted shopper also uploaded a few screenshots to share the bargains she had stumbled upon on the site.
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Amongst these was a box of Lindt Lindor milk chocolate truffles for just 1p (saving £4.99), Hersheys Cookies'n'Cream white chocolate for 50p (saving £3.75), as well as a can for Diet Coke for 4p.
But despite the brand claiming these items hadn't expired, fellow shoppers flocked to comments to warn others.
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One wrote: ''Nope, used them twice and some stuff rotten.''
Someone else added: ''Gosh some chocolates bb [best before] dates are oct 2022, that 4 months out, I have thrown chocolate out with that sort of date range.
''Didn’t know you could still eat them.''
''I’m all for using past the best before dates but not sure I could use them 4 and 7 months past the best before!'' a third penned.
Meanwhile, others were concerned that these were mainly unhealthy, with a person pointing out: ''Great price but all with sugar and not healthy options. That's what we doing with our bodies.''
''It's all junk food,'' another agreed.
Looking for more ways to slash your costs? Here are our favourite apps where restaurants give away food that hasn't been sold.
Kitche
Kitche keeps tracked of the food you purchased from your supermarket shop and will suggest recipes and warn you when items are getting close to their sell by date.
It promises to save households as much as £630 a year by ensuring their food is put to good use and doesn't end up getting thrown away.
You can download the free app on an iPhone or Android smartphone.
It scans your supermarket receipt and lists your items in the app so you can always check how much food you have.
You can set reminders for when items such as milk or bread go past their sell by date and record what you have thrown away so you can work out how much money you have wasted.
The app also has thousands of recipe suggestions that you can filter based on the products you have at home.
No Waste
The free No Waste app lets you scan your food and organise it by expiry date, name or category.
This makes it easier to do the next shop as you can easily see what you are running out of.
Lists can be shared with family so you can give away unwanted food plus you can track how much you are wasting by deleting items you have eaten or that have expired.
The app will tell you how much of your food you have eaten each month and how much money you have saved or wasted.
Olio
Are you going on a diet or did you over order items in your latest shop? You can share unwanted food for free among your neighbours using Olio.
Food shared could be nearing its sell-by date, spare home-grown vegetables or the groceries in your fridge when you go away, move home or are on a diet.
You can also share non-food items such as furniture, clothes, toys, household and beauty products.
Users take a picture of the item, post it to the app and then agree where and how it should be picked up with anyone interested.
The app is free for households but businesses have to pay for a service that will take unsold food and distribute it to them.
Almost 10 million portions of food have been shared through the app, which has 2.6 million users worldwide.
Too Good To Go
Don't let local cafes, restaurants, shops and supermarkets throw away unsold food at the end of each day.
Many restaurant, café and food brands have partnered with Too Good to Go and will provide a "magic bag" of unsold food to users at the end of the working day.
Download and set your location on the Too Good To Go app and you can choose from nearby stores listing their unsold food at a reduced price.
Listings show how much a bag of food costs and how many are left as well as where you need to pick it up.
The items in the bag are always different as it depends on what hasn't sold so there is no guarantee that you will like what you get.
But there are plenty of tasty brands to try such as Greggs, Morrisons, Pret, and Costa.
Karma
Similar to Too Good To Go, Karma lets hungry households rescue unsold meals from businesses at a discount.
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You can search for nearby food to pickup based on your location through the Karma app.
Unlike Too Good to Go, it well tell you what food you are getting so there is even less chance of it being wasted.
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