Variety not the spice of lunch

You know the type. They eat the same thing for lunch, always have and always will.

Rhapsodize all you like about comfort food. They’re the sort of people whose idea of comfort is the ritualistic reassurance of tucking into the same chickpea salad, day after day after day.

It turns out they’ve got plenty of company. A new British study into the eating habits of the country’s workers found one in eight people surveyed confessed to eating the same thing for lunch every single day. Furthermore, 70 per cent of those unimaginative diners have been eating that identical lunch for as long as they can recall. The most popular lunch was a ham sandwich, followed by a cheese one.

It’s not a phenomenon unique to the food-challenged Brits. While filming Friends, cast members Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston and Lisa Kudrow ate the same Cobb salad every day for 10 years. Bernie Madoff, the infamous operator of a Ponzi scheme that is still considered to be the largest financial fraud in U.S. history — and that’s saying something — always lunched on the same cream cheese, smoked salmon and cucumber brown bread sandwich. Well, at least he did until he was incarcerated. It’s not clear what repeat meals Madoff is currently enjoying at the Butner federal prison in North Carolina, where his lunch dates are projected to continue through 2139.

As for the repetitive eating patterns of Canada’s lunch class, well, equivalent data are not readily available. Yet one more thing to blame on the loss of the longform census, we suppose. Recent consumer research here does suggest that sandwiches and fruits remain the top work lunches carried from home but both are declining along with cookies, salads and soup. Foods that are trending are vegetables, yogurt and snack bars.

But the same snack bar, day after day? Only for those who willingly submit to the tyranny of the mono-lunch, in stubborn defiance of a culture of excessive choice.