How to avoid wasting food during your lunch break

If you're bringing it from home, check what's in the fridge before packing your lunch box. If you're eating out, avoid the set menu.

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During lunch breaks, between 15 and 30 percent of perfectly edible food ends up in the garbage. To avoid this, a few small precautions are enough, distinguishing between the two cases: food brought from home and food consumed in a bar, restaurant, or bistro. These two options have one premise in common: lunchtime meals are naturally light, with simple things and it should not be confused with what we normally eat at home. 

  • With food brought from home, plan the portions anyway (without exaggerating), And try to vary your menu. Mini-menus featuring white meat, cold pasta, fruit, and vegetables are ideal for lunch. Avoid wine and alcoholic beverages, which weigh you down and slow down your recovery when you get back to work. 
  • Bring a container from home: a simple way to preserve food, also from the point of view of hygiene and its quality, and prevent it from being wasted. 
  • Check what you already have in the refrigerator: before preparing the lunch box, check the leftovers that you've stored in the refrigerator. You'll surely find something suitable for your lunch break. 
  • If you miscalculated, and you find yourself with plenty of food, you can offer it to colleagues or friends.
  • If instead for your lunch break If you serve yourself in some establishment (from a bar to a restaurant), avoid the set menu: it always includes portions that are too large for the food needs of a simple work break. 
  • Be careful of impulse purchases: sudden appetite, when working, is not only linked to a physiological mechanism, there is always a component of nervous hunger, also due to the stress of the day. The danger is that it leads you to unnecessary and excessive purchases. 
  • Don't be shy with the doggy bag, Especially if you have a pet at home: it's a simple and effective way to reuse, and not waste, leftover food from your lunch break. 

Finally, if you eat in a company cafeteria, the same rules you follow to avoid food waste at home apply. According to the Collective Catering and Nutrition Observatory (Oricon), approximately 3 million Italians eat in a cafeteria every day. And they leave about 50 grams of food on their plates each day: 38.000 tons of wasted food per year. 

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