Tag Archives: Lunch

Earth Week Daily Action: Pack a Waste-Free Lunch

If you’re still getting lunch to-go when you’re at work, Earth Week is the perfect time to pick at least one day to start the habit of bringing lunch from home.

Why bother? Because bringing your own has so many environmental benefitsand usually tastes better, too.

Food packaging is a big source of waste. You only need to look at the pile of plastic, styrene, paper and cellophane to know this is true. A simple salad from a take-out bar may generate the following:

* throwaway carry out paper or plastic bag

* throwaway plastic salad bowl or tray

* throwaway plastic or aluminum foil lid

* throwaway fork, knife, spoon

* throwaway paper napkin

* throwaway plastic container for salad dressing

* throwaway paper wrappers for individual servings of salt and pepper

* throwaway straws if you get a drink in your…throwaway cup

And that’s just for one meal. Multiply this by the millions of people who take out salad (or sandwiches or soup) every day, and the impact is enormous. EPA estimates that 780,000 tons of plastic and polystyrene cups and plates were discarded in 2008, enough to circle the earth 436 times, says ReuseIt.com. “These cups are non-biodegradable, deplete the Earth’s ozone layer, waste enormous amounts of landfill, and are deadly to marine life.”

Even if you only consider one fast-food place, like McDonald’s, the impact is significant: The company claims to serve over 60 million people globally each day!!

Another advantage of taking your own lunch is that you’ll reduce food waste. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that most people waste about 30 percent of the food they buy because it spoils or expires. That’s not only a terrible way to squander food, it’s a foolish way to spend money!

Though there are plenty of ways to use leftovers creatively and deliciously in lunches, people just forget about themor don’t make the time to package them up. One way to make sure you’re making your lunch at home and taking it with you is to get yourself a nice lunch bag or box to take it in.

Mighty Nest sells a lovely assortment of non-toxic lunch boxes for kids and adults alike. They’re light, washable and may make exactly the kind of fashion statement you want. You can also find reusable lunch bags and boxes at Target, Wal-Mart and many other stores. Many models are either freezable themselves or come with a freezer compartment in the event you need to keep certain foods cold.

Also, keep reusable food containers with lids handy when you are cleaning up after supper. Rather than cover a bowl of leftovers and slide it into the back of the fridge, apportion the food into lunch-size jars so they’re easy to grab and add to a lunch box before you leave for work.

Better yet, pack your lunch at night for the next morning so all you need to do is grab and go. Keep your own silverware at work so you don’t need to take it in every day, and don’t forget a cloth napkin!

Related:
9 Make-Ahead Lunches to Carry in a Mason Jar
Waste-Free Lunch Tips

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Earth Week Daily Action: Pack a Waste-Free Lunch

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What’s French for Chicken Nugget? The Truth About School Lunches Around the World

Mother Jones

By now you’ve probably seen the viral slideshow called “School Lunches Around the World,” in which a heavily processed American school lunch is contrasted against an array of fresh, healthy-looking victuals from Italy, France, Greece, etc. It’s a compelling argument against the puny resources spent on school lunch in the United States, where, once labor and overhead are accounted for, schools get less than a dollar per daily lunch to spend on ingredients.

But as the great school-food blogger Bettina Elias Siegel points out, those sumptuous photos don’t depict actual meals being served in actual schools—but, rather, staged shots that oversimplify a complex topic. As it turns out, Sweetgreen, a chain of health-food eateries located mainly on the East Coast, produced the photos, but didn’t make that clear on its Tumblr.

In case you haven’t seen them, here’s a sampling:

Photo: Sweetgreen

Photo: Sweetgreen

Photo: Sweetgreen

So we see images of appetizing lunch from countries around the world contrasted against a relatively grim platter of pale chicken nuggets, potatoes, and peas from here in the good ol’ USA. Siegel writes that many of her readers sent her a link to the gallery, “understandably but mistakenly” under the impression that the images depicted real-deal lunches, not a corporate photo shoot. The UK’s Daily Mail even took them at face value, blaring in a headline that “Photos reveal just how meager US students’ meals are compared to even the most cash-strapped of nations.”

Siegel, though, had questions:

Sweetgreen says it based is photos on “some typical school meals around the world,” but it doesn’t tell us how it obtained the information underlying the photos. Were the meals modeled on public school menus? Private school menus? Are the meals depicted typical of what’s served in a given country, or did Sweetgreen cherry-pick the most appealing items? And on what basis were the elements chosen for America’s school meal?

Most egregiously, the Greece photo portrays a robust lunch featuring chicken over whole grains with yogurt, pomegranate seeds, a salad, and fresh citrus. Siegel provides a reality check: Debt-plagued Greece doesn’t have the resources to provide much of anything to eat for its school kids. She points to a 2013 New York Times piece reporting that Greek schools “do not offer subsidized cafeteria lunches. Students bring their own food or buy items from a canteen. The cost has become insurmountable for some families with little or no income.” Meanwhile, Siegel points out, even with dire funding for US lunches, more than 20 million economically distressed US kids had access to free or cut-rate lunches in 2013.

She adds that some US school districts do magical things with their minuscule budgets. Besides, even in France, where schools typically have twice as much to spend on ingredients per meal, lunches in some cases can look pretty, well, American.

Here’s Sweetgreen’s version of the French lunch:

Photo: Sweetgreen

And here’s one of an French lunch Siegel found on the What’s for School Lunch? blog, where “real people around the world submit their actual photos of school meals.” There’s no reason to assume all French lunches consist of chicken nuggets and well, French fries—but there’s no reason to believe that Sweetgreen’s idealized version is representative, either.

Photo: What’s for School Lunch?

After Siegel’s posting, Sweetgreen added an appendage to its Tumblr page:

Note: These images are not intended to be exact representations of school lunches, but instead, are meant to portray different types of foods found in cafeterias around the world. To create this series, we evaluated government standards for school lunch programs, and compared this data to photos that real students had taken of their meals and shared online.

Sweetgreen’s photo essay was designed to support an effort to raise funds for Food Corps, a “nationwide team of AmeriCorps leaders who connect kids to real food and help them grow up healthy” through cooking and gardening classes. It’s an impressive bit of corporate marketing on behalf of a good cause—but not an accurate depiction of school lunch.

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What’s French for Chicken Nugget? The Truth About School Lunches Around the World

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Zojirushi SL-JAE14 Mr. Bento Stainless Steel Lunch Jar, Silver

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Zojirushi Classic Bento Vacuum Lunch Jar

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Zojirushi SL-NCE09 Ms. Bento Stainless-Steel Vacuum Lunch Jar

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Zojirushi Classic Bento Vacuum Lunch Jar

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Zojirushi SL-NCE09 Ms. Bento Stainless-Steel Vacuum Lunch Jar

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Zojirushi SL-JAE14 Mr. Bento Stainless Steel Lunch Jar, Silver

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Zojirushi Classic Bento Vacuum Lunch Jar

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Zojirushi SL-NCE09 Ms. Bento Stainless-Steel Vacuum Lunch Jar

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