High-Energy
Brown Bag
Lunch Ideas
As an employee working at a part- or full-time job, you’re
probably eating lunch away from home up to five days a
week. If you hit the soup and sandwich place everyday—or worse, if you’re
eating fast food five times a week—you’re going to pack on pounds and drop a
lot of cash.
Brown bag it instead! Try these tasty, high-energy
menu items to give you energy throughout your day:
Pasta Lover’s Lunch Salad. Pack a cold pasta salad
made with lean meat or low-fat cheese (added protein),
lots of vegetables and whole wheat or whole-grain pasta.
Toss everything together with a light vinaigrette salad
dressing made with extra virgin olive oil or canola oil.
Mediterranean Pita Pocket. Fill a pita pocket with
falafel balls, lettuce and hummus. Some falafel balls
come cooked and ready to eat.
Fruit and Cheese Plate. Fill a divided plastic
container with assorted cubes or slices of reduced-fat
cheese, easy-to-eat fruit such as apples and pear slices,
grapes, berries or melon and whole wheat crackers.
Fun Fried Rice. When made with eggs, tofu or chopped
lean meat and lots of veggies, cold fried rice can be a
satisfying noontime treat. Make your own using brown
rice. Or, when you get take-out Chinese food for dinner,
set some rice aside for the next day.
Looking for a Healthy Snack?
Try the Snack App…
Offered through Everyday Health Inc. and available on the iPhone app
store, this free Snack App will help you choose the perfect snack, and
tell you how many calories it has. Just let the Snack App know what
you are craving—salty, sweet, crunchy—and you’ll get a list of tasty
snack ideas sorted by calorie levels and complete with nutritional
information. Feeling guilty after you snack? The Snack App also
suggests simple ways to burn the calories you just consumed!
Veggie Sushi. You can now buy pre-made sushi at
many supermarkets. Choose sushi that is filled with
veggies (such as avocado and cucumber) so there’s no
chance that it will get a little “fishy” in your lunch bag.
Super Salads. For a Cobb salad, fill a plastic container
with spinach or chopped dark green lettuce, chopped
hard-boiled egg, light cheese and/or lean ham. Or toss
in the ingredients for a Chinese chicken salad: dark
salad greens, shredded chicken, shredded carrots, sliced
green onion and toasted sliced almonds. The salad
will stay fresher if you add the dressing at lunchtime.
( Tip: put a light dressing into a small container,
buy packets of light dressing, or use extra packets
of dressing left over from a fast-food meal.)
It’s a Wrap! Wraps are a nice change of pace from
the usual sandwich. Use a high-fiber multi-grain flour
tortilla, available in most supermarkets. Spread on
mustard, hummus, light salad dressing or green or
sun-dried tomato pesto. Then fill it up with chicken
Caesar salad or assorted lean meats, cheese, tomato,
sliced onion and shredded Romaine lettuce. Just roll
it up and wrap in foil.
Peanut Butter Power.
Make a peanut butter meal
by spooning two tablespoons
of natural-style peanut butter in
a reusable plastic container, along with whole wheat
crackers or whole wheat pita pocket wedges and raw
vegetables such as celery or zucchini.