June 02, 2005
Bring Your Lunch to Work
A Warner Brothers WWII era Porky Pig cartoon.
It's amazing where one can find inspiration sometimes. 
I was watching TV with my daughter when a classic Looney Toons short came up where Porky Pig was running an egg production facility for the war. One thing that caught my eye was a scene where all the chickens were arriving for work and punching a time clock to start their day.
They were all carrying lunch pails.
On the face of it that probably doesn't seem important, but it points to one of the reasons that the U.S. is so fat these days: Eating out.
Back then people took the time to prepare a lunch at home to bring to work and it's a sure bet that there weren't bags of chips in there and of course protein bars and the like didn't exist yet. They probably had something like a turkey and cheese sandwich, fruit and some sort of vegetable.
What a concept.
Today's fast food popularity is a huge contributor to obesity. Why take the time to prepare your lunch at home when you can drop 5 bucks at the local fast food joint and have your burger and fries eaten before you even get back to work? Of course you're probably getting close to an entire day's worth of calories in that one meal, but hey, it's convenient, right?
And it's not just fast food. Go to any chain restaurant and you'll get a portion of food that's double what you should be eating.
So do yourself a favor: Pack your lunch. You'll save a ton of calories and a ton of money over the long run.
Posted by Vic on June 2, 2005 12:38 PMVic,
I couldn't agree more - eating out for lunch every day is a really bad habit to get into, especially if you don't know how to at least estimate the number of calories you're getting. I only eat lunch out once or twice a week - on the weekends, and it's usually just a sandwich and maybe a diet coke or iced tea. Even with sandwiches you have to be careful. I never get mayo, cheese, bacon or any of the extras (o.k. maybe one slice of cheese, rarely). Even with the breads you have to be careful - no ciabatta, croissants, foccacia etc., just whole wheat, rye, maybe pumpernickle. Subway is good, imo, since they give the calorie info for alot of their stuff. I always hate getting ready made sandwiches. That happened to me last week when we were at a cafe and it's all they had. I had to remove the bacon and cheese, then scrape off the mayo and replace it with mustard. The bread was some kind of thick, fluffy stuff with a glazed-looking crust (vegetable oil ?) so I threw half the bread away & got a couple extra pickle spears to help fill me up (why do they always just assume everyone wants mayo on a sandwich, no matter what kind of sandwich it is ?).
The people I work with are always bringing in fried chicken, barbecued ribs, cheeseburgers, cakes etc. for lunch. They've learned not to ask me if I want to partake. I feel like telling them they're going to kill themselves eating like that so much, but I keep to myself.
Darren
Yup. It's really like swimming upstream finding something healthy to eat when you're out and about.
That's one reason that planning ahead is so important.
Vic
