Why choose to eat out of bins?

There's a Pret a Manger on Dover Street in Mayfair which most days throws away a binbag full of wrapped-up sandwiches and salads.

I cycled there last night, but saw from a distance that a man was already rummaging through the bags trying to find which one contained food. It was a pleasant evening and some fifty Mayfair workers were drinking outside the pub on the other side of the road.

As I came closer I saw the man was a Big Issue vendor, magazines in hand, wearing dirty sneakers and a baggy hooded top. I waited until I'd seen he hadn't found any food.

I cycled to other places in Mayfair and filled my courier bag with sushi from Itsu, salad boxes from Eat and muffins and pastries from Starbucks, not looking through the bags until I'd been passed by crowds heading for nightclubs.

One of my flatmates later told me he felt no shame in such a situation, because getting this free food was something he could justify politically and which enabled his lifestyle; and, anyway, those upmarket partygoers who might look at him with disdain weren't the type of people he'd ever be friends with anyway.

He'd recently decided not to go through the binbags of the wasteful French bakery Paul because he arrived to see a bearded gentleman tramp had got there first, and was slurping sliced apricots from danishes which he then dropped back. He saw this as just a funny story.

I don't know if I share the security of his beliefs. Perhaps it's easier because he's only 21. A decade older, I found myself wondering if I had more in common with the Big Issue vendor than the crowd outside the pub. If so, is it just some choice I've made? Why would any sane person chose to be amongst the evening bin-rummagers rather than with the slick guys with casual-dress jobs drinking outside pubs with their laughing blondes?