On healthy lunching
Thursday, November 1st, 2012 09:19 pmIt was ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
liv who first complained about the packed lunch I took to work being unhealthy—it consisted of jam sandwiches ("jam" here including marmalade and honey as well as the narrow sense of the term), followed by an apple, but others have also done since. (liv also exclaimed "Where's the protein?", but I don't see the need to have protein in more than the main meal of the day, and lunch is a light meal for me, since I don't want to have the blood diverted from my brain to my belly for the duration of the afternoon.)
Recently, I gave a little thought to switching to something healthier, and began running supplies down of the more perishable types of jam. (Perhaps I should note that I do also have salad sandwiches in the summer.) Then I moved to Berlin for two months, where the only supermarket breads that are kosher are German kinds, which are, as the folk etymology puts it, suitable only for eating by animals (and Germans), and the kosher bakeries were not within easy reach. So for the duration of my time in Berlin, I switched to having carrot salad instead of my sandwiches for lunch, thus killing two birds with one stone.
Back in the Big Bad Megalopolis, I resumed running down my jam supplies, and switched to eating carrot salad here too. In Berlin I was happy to eat carrot salad for lunch every day. (Look, I'm a creature of routine; for donkeys years I've had exactly the same sandwiches for lunch every day, followed by the same type of apple.) However, there I was cycling only 5¾ miles to work, and on flat terrain. Here I'm cycling 8¾ miles, an increase of 50%, and have to go over a substantial hill each way too. This gives me more of an appetite, and despite bumping up from one carrot in my salad to two, I'm still finding myself hungry at the end of lunch, and raiding the corporate fruit bowl.
As a result of this, I'm wondering why I'm doing this. I appear to have just fallen for the idea that unhealthy food has dire consequences for my long-term health without stopping to question it. Okay, so maybe my lunch sandwiches have/had a high sugar content, but I don't have a problem with dental caries, and they haven't given me diabetes or expanded my waistline, and if I've been lunching on these for thirty years without problem (along with making sure my main meal of the day is well-balanced and nutritious), I would venture to suggest that even though they're not as healthy as other foods, this doesn't have any real consequences upon my health.
So, maybe the way to deal with hunger at the end of lunchtime is simply to head back to the supermarket, and stock back up on jams and buy a loaf of bread?
liv who first complained about the packed lunch I took to work being unhealthy—it consisted of jam sandwiches ("jam" here including marmalade and honey as well as the narrow sense of the term), followed by an apple, but others have also done since. (liv also exclaimed "Where's the protein?", but I don't see the need to have protein in more than the main meal of the day, and lunch is a light meal for me, since I don't want to have the blood diverted from my brain to my belly for the duration of the afternoon.)Recently, I gave a little thought to switching to something healthier, and began running supplies down of the more perishable types of jam. (Perhaps I should note that I do also have salad sandwiches in the summer.) Then I moved to Berlin for two months, where the only supermarket breads that are kosher are German kinds, which are, as the folk etymology puts it, suitable only for eating by animals (and Germans), and the kosher bakeries were not within easy reach. So for the duration of my time in Berlin, I switched to having carrot salad instead of my sandwiches for lunch, thus killing two birds with one stone.
Back in the Big Bad Megalopolis, I resumed running down my jam supplies, and switched to eating carrot salad here too. In Berlin I was happy to eat carrot salad for lunch every day. (Look, I'm a creature of routine; for donkeys years I've had exactly the same sandwiches for lunch every day, followed by the same type of apple.) However, there I was cycling only 5¾ miles to work, and on flat terrain. Here I'm cycling 8¾ miles, an increase of 50%, and have to go over a substantial hill each way too. This gives me more of an appetite, and despite bumping up from one carrot in my salad to two, I'm still finding myself hungry at the end of lunch, and raiding the corporate fruit bowl.
As a result of this, I'm wondering why I'm doing this. I appear to have just fallen for the idea that unhealthy food has dire consequences for my long-term health without stopping to question it. Okay, so maybe my lunch sandwiches have/had a high sugar content, but I don't have a problem with dental caries, and they haven't given me diabetes or expanded my waistline, and if I've been lunching on these for thirty years without problem (along with making sure my main meal of the day is well-balanced and nutritious), I would venture to suggest that even though they're not as healthy as other foods, this doesn't have any real consequences upon my health.
So, maybe the way to deal with hunger at the end of lunchtime is simply to head back to the supermarket, and stock back up on jams and buy a loaf of bread?
