6 of Hearts - Packed Lunch

Here are a few tips to get you started:

Pack food in appropriate and reusable storage. Get a set of reusable containers in an assortment of sizes with good seals. Having an assortment of sizes provides options depending on what type of meal you are preparing. Adequate storage will help to ensure safe food storage along with ease of transport for meals at school or work (Hursthouse 2020).

Reserve a time for meal preparation each week. Choose a day and time (i.e. Sunday afternoon) and allow 1-2 hours for preparation time of 1-2 meals all at one time. (Hursthouse 2020).

Make sure recipes are simple, achievable, and healthy. Find and make recipes which take approximately 30-45 minutes each to make and will fit into your allocated meal prep time (Hursthouse 2020).

There are many benefits from meal preparation and packed lunches:
One benefit is saving money on food. Purchasing several ingredients to prepare multiple meals, all at one time, helps to keep costs lower. Investing in lower-cost ingredients such as seasonal vegetables and canned legumes such as chickpeas, beans, or lentils will help to bulk out each meal and make food portions go further. Another benefit is a reduction of food waste by cooking prepared meals in bulk when you make meals that can be frozen or by using up leftovers. This will also save on food costs. And finally, saving time is a useful benefit. Meal preparation reduces the time needed every day to make decisions about what food to eat. Meals are already pre-planned and ready to be eaten (Hursthouse 2020).

The reliance upon convenience food is one of the biggest contributors to poor dietary habits and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and other chronic illnesses. These less healthy choices in foods are regularly short on nutrients and overly high amounts of fat, salt, and sugar. Learning basic food organisation skills will help you establish long-term healthy eating habits and save you money and time (Heart Research Institute NZ).

In a paper by Matwiejczyk et al. 2015, the authors highlight the online Bring a Healthy Lunch Box to Work Challenge initiative to apply recommendations of the Australian Dietary Guidelines by encouraging adults in workplaces to make small, incremental changes toward a healthier packed lunch. Participants could choose between 1 and 4 challenges every day for a week: 1. increase the frequency of bringing a healthy lunch to work, 2. include an extra serving of vegetables in their lunchbox, 3. swap unhealthy for healthy food and beverage options such as sweetened drinks for water and 4. pack an environmentally friendly lunch. The authors report more than 90% of the final respondents reported achieving their chosen challenge(s) on all or all but 1 day of the week. The paper demonstrates the intervention of swapping unhealthy foods for more healthy ones is very achievable and suggests potentially useful prompts for modest nutrition behaviour changes. If these types of changes are implemented and maintained over the long term this will benefit an individual’s health outcomes.

Small changes CAN make a big difference – that’s what the 1% club is all about.

https://www.hri.org.nz/health/nutrition/prepping-healthy-budget-friendly-food

Hursthouse, N. (2020). Want to get started with meal prep? Heart Foundation NZ. (May 11). https://www.heartfoundation.org.nz/about-us/news/blogs/everything-you-need-to-know-about-meal-prep

Prepping healthy, budget-friendly food • heart research institute NZ. Heart Research Institute NZ. (n.d.). https://www.hri.org.nz/health/nutrition/prepping-healthy-budget-friendly-food

Matwiejczyk, L., Field, L., Withall, E., and Scott, J. (2015). An online workplace healthy lunchbox challenge for adults. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 47(4), 399-401. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2015.04.001