Laptop? Check.
Phone? Check.
Car keys? Check.
Lunch? Oh, Lunch!
It’s that timeless morning routine that we all know. The 6:30 scramble to get everything together for the day, and it’s usually only as we walk out the door we think about lunch. Whether you’re packing a school bag or a work satchel, the lunch question still seems to arise; should you pack your own, buy it, or skip it altogether? For us, the answer is always the same; make it ahead, make it healthy, and make it delicious!
Lunch boxes have been around since about the same time as people started eating, more or less. Although we have just discovered the beauty of bento boxes, the Japanese have been using these for over 1000 years, and in ancient times, food was wrapped in leaves or bark to keep it clean and portable. Things got a whole lot easier in the 1880s when metal lunch boxes were coined from recycled tobacco tins, and easier again in the early 1900s when the first lunch boxes were marketed to industrial workers. Fast forward to today, and you can choose anything from a minimalistic bamboo bowl to a neoprene bag bespattered with comic super-heroes. Things certainly have changed.
There are many compelling reasons for packing your own lunch box, but we’ve picked the top three; save on calories, time and money.
Take-away or school cafeteria lunches often overload you with salt and preservatives. After all, when you are serving hundreds of meals, efficiency is of the essence. Once you factor in the sauce sachets and tempting trimmings you add at the checkout, you’re suddenly consuming immense amounts of calories without hardly realising.
For the time-poor, buying lunch or skipping it altogether might seem like the best option. But why waste time queuing for second-rate sushi, when you could be tucking into hummus and dippers or a chicken wrap you just pulled from the fridge? If you’ve made it ahead of time, you can use every minute of your all-too-fleeting lunch break to do what really matters.
Choosing some good lunch recipes and pantry staples can also help you save a few dollars. $15.00 for a burger or bento bowl might not seem like much but, if that’s a bi-weekly habit, you’re talking about $1500.00 a year. Just quietly, that’s the equivalent of a brand-new KitchenAid with accessories, or half the price of a Thermomix.
Invest in a lunch box and fill it with tempting homemade treats. It will put some time back in your day, some money back in your pocket and some healthy back into your diet.
