What did you eat when you were a student?

[Sunnytoday01]

I’m going back to the ‘80s but my diet was rubbish and I couldn’t cook. I used to eat a lot of toast and a hot meal would be Richmond sausages, smash potato and mushy peas or baked beans. My housemates and I would eat a cheese and tomato oven pizza occasionally. I even liked a pot noodle 🤣

I eat completely differently now but I can’t believe how awful my diet was and I didn’t seem to mind!

Early 80s:

M&S tinned chicken soup - dinner every night of the week, with toast if hungry
Toast with butter & black coffee for breakfast
lunch at Uni cafes- pie chips gravy, ham & pineapple toastie, bloomer cheese sandwich. Your basic health food.

At weekends, maybe chicken curry or chilli with a lot of beans. Also Batchelors Savory mince as pp posted.

Night out was 3x 1/2 pints of cider at Students Union for about 99p total.

I was thin…

I was in catered halls with notions (the halls, not me), and I ate very well. Three course meals every day, and chips with curry sauce or a sandwich and crisps for lunch. It was quite a long walk in, so I remained below seven and a half stone in spite of the relentless feeding. I couldn't often face getting up for the cooked breakfasts though. Bed was much more appealing than a fried egg at 7am.

We had Mean Beans which I think was the veggie version of Grub on a Grant!

The mum of my flatmate used to bring us homemade food every week or two, as she only lived an hour away from our uni, so we ate well. Stew, bean chilli, curry, lovely soups etc. When we did cook for ourselves it was lots jacket potato’s with different fillings, stir fry or we ate sandwiches.

I can’t remember! Early 90s. Lived in catered halls for two years & regularly didn’t eat their breakfast - usually made it to dinner, probably ate a packet of crisps for lunch. What I do remember is having a massively foodie BF, who was always at my place in my third year so it was probably asparagus pasta or mushroom and Stilton pasta. Crème fraiche was often involved and Dijon mustard…. Maybe some filo pastry or an avocado… ratatouille.. salad, bread, cheese?! My housemate trained me to eat olives. Red wine & fags on the stairs. A quick detour into M&S for a lump of roast chicken. I remember eating out a lot - usually cheap Italian or a steak. There was a great cafe down the road that did these enormous tuna baps with sunflower seeds - ate a fair few of those. I don’t really remember doing a whole lot of cooking.. except for if we had a dinner party. Said BFs mother was a terrific cook so made us beef bourguignon/ navarin or some other hearty meaty stew whenever she came to visit. I didn’t miss him after we split but I will forever miss his mum’s cooking!

A lot of toasties. I assume that cheese was a lot cheaper back then ?

Marlboro lights and cheap alcohol mostly.

Otherwise pasta and pesto or own brand veggies burgers and smash,

I worked my arse off in my gap year and worked 25hrs on top of my degree, didn't drink alcohol and meal planned.

I was a right boring twat but did cook proper food.

Normal meals like spaghetti bolognese, curries, lasagne, jacket potato and cheese, tuna steak and new potatoes, pasta pesto etc
And lots of chocolate.

I came to study in the UK from abroad and was mesmerised by toad in the hole. I ate a lot of ready-meal toad in the hole, and pot noodles. Can't remember any vegetables.

Tortellini pasta with tomato veggie sauce. Chilli and rice. Baked spuds. Yum yums and roll and flat sausage - not at the same time- (one year I lived on roll and flat sausage and yum yums just about). It depended on how much cash I had!

Pasta and cheese, super noddles, three cheese crispy pancake sandwiches and lots of beans on toast.

Pasta mostly, and jacket potatoes.

Early 90s - I could cook well enough (recipe 1: slowly soften an onion while I find some ingredients and decide if it's a sauce, a stew or a curry; recipe 2: macaroni cheese; recipe 3: stuff a vegetable with a rice and tomato mixture; recipe 4: grill food with beans and chips)

We'd eat stuff like pasta with tomato and lentil sauce, tinned chick pea veg curry, veg stir fry, toast and marg, toast and marmite, toast and beans, toast and hoops, a cabbage cheese peanut thing (which is lush BTW), macaroni cheese, fried egg sandwiches, grated cheese on just about everything.

I lived with my boyfriend and every couple of months we used to head to Aldi with a massive backpack each to stock up on 1p beans and tomatos.

Super noodles on toast, with cheese.

i really, really want that now

Catered halls for first two years then flatshare with three mates. We had a strict food budget of £40 a week, shopped mostly in Iceland and the local Indian supermarket. One flatmate was an awesome cook, she had Indian heritage and her curries were legendary - I still use several of her recipes. First couple of weeks back after a break were interesting, she went home and cranked the spice up, then would forget that we were pathetic Scots when she came back! Me and another flatmate were ok cooks. Her granny gave her a cookbook from the 30s that we tried a couple of things from - lentil bake topped with mashed potato was not a success oddly enough. Fourth flatmate had never cooked before moving in with us. He learned quickly as if his food was bad he had to pay for a takeaway. His beef burger in sausage casserole packet mix was a definite low.

Thanks to the many, many student promotions a night out pretty much anywhere in town was about a fiver, and we kept fit by walking everywhere.

Pasta, tinned tomatoes and onions. I didn't eat pasta for years afterwards.

Jacket potatoes with beans.
Jacket potato with beans and cheese, sometimes cheese and beans.
Pasta and cheap jar sauce.
Pasta with a squeeze of BBQ sauce and a small knob of butter, as introduced by my lovely northern housemate.
Pizza.
Stuff from the chippy for about 1.20 a time 😆
Loads of toast and marmite.
Booze.

To be fair this improved a lot in the later years as I had a boyfriend to impress and pay for most of the shopping.

90s. Started off with tinned soup and toast, then moved on to pizzas made with pizza bases, pesto, tomato sauce and cheese; pasta with pasta and veg sauce made from scratch (ie. onion, tinned tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms etc.); pasta salads; stir fry and rice; scrambled or fried eggs on toast; lentil dal and rice. Also ate a fair amount of marmite on toast for lunches as well 😆

I had access to a decent kitchen as well as food in halls, but generally cooked with friends, usually pastas and stir fries of varying kinds from scratch.

I was in a vegetarian phase so lots of rice, beans and lentils.

Golden Wonder noodles. I quite happily considered those on their own a whole meal. I shudder at the thought now.

I quite regularly used to eat kebabs at 3am after clubbing from a place which didn’t even bother to open in the daytime as there’s no way you would have touched them sober. My flatmates also sometimes used to go home and cook AlphaBites. Or eat children’s birthday cakes we’d bought in Sainsbury’s. Such happy times!

Absolute rubbish. Oven pizza on a good day, but there were other days when I’d just eat biscuits because that was all I had in 🤦‍♀️

I used to really suffer with low iron and migraines, I wonder why…!

Not a student but when I was skint and living in a bedsit at 18 I loved Super Noodle sandwiches in Scottish plain bread.

Whatever was left in halls canteen when I got back in. Always pudding too.

Beans on toast
Jacket potatoes
2 minute tortellinis
Hot dogs
Old El Paso fajitas
Lasagna made with Dolmio sauce and mince
Instant noodles with an egg
Mac & cheese with ketchup

Hate to say this but those awful student meals have become my ultimate guilty pleasure comfort food these days. Whenever I get the rare night alone of not having to cook for the whole family, I prepare one of those and love it!