Lunch 2015
Check out Parade’s top trends in the American midday meal, including the school lunch.
Remember when the lunch horn would blow and everyone would sit down for an hour and eat? Well, it’s a new day, where lunch is quicker and “snackier” and often eaten alone, says Melissa Abbott, vice president of culinary insights at the market research firm Hartman Group. Our new habits reflect the changing American work landscape. Between flexible schedules and our 24/7 connection to the office, says Abbott, “we feel like we have to be productive at all times.” And that’s changed how, where and what we eat for lunch.
There is no “lunch hour”
The American workday lunch is now loosely defined, shifting daily in response to work demands. “My lunch routine is no routine at all,” says Ron Fleischer, 55, a professor and animation director in Chicago whose lunchtime depends on his schedule for the day and when he gets hungry. “I always wing it.”
That’s typical, says Abbott. “People might be having lunch at 10:30. Or they might be having lunch at 2:30.”
We’re eating alone
Because multitasking and eating on the fly are the order of the day for many of us, “we’re not eating together the way we used to,” Abbott says. “We’re eating at the computer or we’re doing something.”
That means we’re eating solo nearly half the time—by choice. “I’m usually busy and need to go on to other things,” says Fleischer, who “inhales” his takeout salad or sandwich at his desk. Even when we eat with coworkers, it centers around work, Abbott says, since it’s now common for employers to order in food for lunchtime meetings.
And because an estimated 30 million of us are telecommuting, at least some of the By Alison Ashton Cover and opening photography by Lisa Leake/100DaysofRealFood.com
time, it’s no surprise that more than half of lunches are eaten at home. “I always eat leftovers standing up at the kitchen counter,” says Erika Kerekes, 48, an entrepreneur and marketing consultant
in Santa Monica, Calif.
But the all-American work ethic that has so many of us toiling through lunch takes a toll on our health, says Dan Buettner, author of The Blue Zone Solution: Eating and Living Like the World’s Healthiest
People (National Geographic). “You should never eat at your desk,” says Buettner, noting that lunch with friends or family is a healthy habit among the world’s happiest, longest-living people. Distracted eating in front of the computer makes you more likely to overeat, he warns, and habitually working through lunch boosts levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which interferes with digestion.
We’re a nation of snackers
Snacks now account for 50 percent of our “eating occasions,” according to Hartman Group research. “The size of lunch has shrunk because we’re snacking on either side quite a bit more,” says Abbott. Even our lunches—whether for adults or kids—are “snacky”: hummus with carrots; a bit of this leftover or that leftover; or a handful of nuts with a green salad, an apple and half a bagel.
We’re brown-bagging it
“Most lunches are sourced from home,” says Sara Monnette, vice president of consumer insights and innovation at the market research firm Technomic, Inc. For those working at home, grazing in the kitchen is a no-brainer. For folks heading to the office, brown-bagging has never gone out of style: It’s affordable, convenient and, of course, saves the time of hunting down something to eat.
“I usually bring lunch from home, typically pasta or soup that I’ve prepared the night before, along with a piece of fruit,” says John Tonini, 49, a sales director in Portland, Ore.
We’re eating in a hurry
Even when we do step out of the office or home for lunch, we’re reluctant to wait in line if we can avoid it. “Speed and convenience are huge expectations,” says Monnette. We also expect it to be good and cheap. Blaze Pizza, a national chain that serves made-to-order pies in just three minutes starting at about $5, is an example of how fast-casual restaurants are serving up what we crave.
Online ordering, offered by all the major fast-casual spots, from Subway to Chipotle, speeds things up even more, and many have mobile apps for even faster custom orders. The next step, says Monnette, is lunch delivery from fastfood chains. Taco Bell just announced a delivery partnership with Door-Dash because those gorditas are even better if someone brings them to you.
Prepared food, from readymade salads at Trader Joe’s to Starbucks’ popular line of Bistro Boxes, with variations of fruit, cheese, crackers and hummus, allow us to literally grab lunch to go. Monnette notes that grocery stores and even convenience stores are stepping up their prepared-foods selection. Walk into a Whole Foods these days, and you’ll find plenty of temptation at the pizza station, taco stand, sandwich deli and salad bar. And if even that seems like it takes too long, you can always snag a fresh ready-made wrap from the cooler.
But no matter what we’re eating for lunch or when—we want it fast, we want it good and we want it now.
Social media is changing how we eat (photo first!)
If you’ve put down your fork to take a photo of your lunch, welcome to the club. Lunch is big on social media, from Twitter and Instagram to Facebook and Tumblr. In fact, food-related posts spike around lunchtime, says Janice Morris, head of entertainment and lifestyle news at Twitter, where such posts have evolved from 140-character texts to visually rich tweets with pictures,
video and emojis. The daily social media wave crests at lunchtime and rolls through the day across the country, says Morris, with everyone from office workers to chefs and celebs sharing 80,000 lunch-related tweets every day.
And that, in turn, is influencing what we eat. Every week, #MeatlessMonday posts encourage more plant-based lunches and when #NationalFried Chicken-Day trended recently, she saw an uptick in related lunchtime tweets as people shared their fried-chicken meals. “When you see the conversation trending, you don’t want to miss out,” says Morris.
The next step may be using social media to order lunch. Fooji.co is a new service in New York and San Francisco that lets users order meals by tweeting a food-related emoji. Craving a burger? Just tweet a burger emoji to @gofooji to be delivered for a flat fee of $15 per item, including tax and tip. You won’t know where the burger is coming from and you can’t customize your order, so it’s a service for adventurous eaters only.
Free lunch is an office perk
To keep workers on site and productive, many employers stock break rooms with fresh fruit,
granola bars, hummus, crackers and carrots. Tech companies, where employees often put in long hours, are serving healthy, light, innovative fare—often for free. The “cafés” at Google’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters set the standard with fresh, local ingredients and a variety of cuisines—all free.
Schools are trying to offer healthier fare
The basic National School Lunch Program (NSLP) standards for reimbursable meals are the same across the U.S., but how those standards are interpreted varies, says Chef Ann Cooper, director of food services for the Boulder Valley School District in Colorado and founder of the Chef Ann Foundation. Known as “The Renegade Lunch Lady,” Cooper advocates for healthier lunches.
“In Boulder, it’s salad bars in every school, no high fructose corn syrup, no trans fat, no artificial colors or dyes and everything cooked from scratch,” says Cooper. “It’s a struggle with the money we have, but it’s real food.”
Elsewhere, kids are eating the same old cafeteria fare—dressed up a bit healthier. Whole-grain chicken nuggets and tater tots
are a step in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go, says Cooper.
Schools and parents want better food for kids, she says, but the challenges are daunting. Schools are reimbursed an average of $3.04 per lunch, per day, for children who qualify for free meals, and that covers food costs and staff salaries.
For some schools, the solution is to outsource to companies like Revolution Foods, which provides healthy, prepared meals to more than 1,000 public and charter schools across the country. And contrary to what many parents may think, kids do eat their vegetables, says Kristen Groos Richmond, co-founder and CEO of Revolution Foods. “Our salads are huge hits with kids across the country, from chicken Caesar salad to sesame chicken salad to chef ’s salad.” They also serve regional dishes, such as red beans and rice in New Orleans and tamales in Texas.
For other parents, the challenge is packing a healthy meal kids will eat. It’s one Lisa Leake, author of the cookbook
100 Days of Real Food (William Morrow) knows all too well. Her popular blog, 100daysofrealfood.com, chronicles her family’s efforts to eat unprocessed foods, including her kids’ lunches.
“It’s definitely more work,” says Leake of Matthews, N.C. “Parents need to understand that changing the way your kids eat is a very long process, but it’s so worth it.”
And the lunch box is a good place to start. Leake shares her kids’ lunches on social media—simple yet creative meals that any grownup would appreciate too. A recent post: leftover pork carnitas, corn tortillas, coleslaw and a homemade carrot-applesauce muffin.
What does Leake’s own lunch look like? “My lunches aren’t nearly as pretty as theirs,” she admits. “My favorite lunch is dinner leftovers, but when you cook from scratch as much as we do, leftovers are amazing.”
Visit Parade.com/smartlunch for 4 Steps to a Smarter School Lunch.