This person’s problem can be solved by a sandwich. Takes like 3 minutes to make, or can be prepped earlier, no cooking necessary, has color, is fresh, not frozen, beats any fast food meal in price and quality. Also can even be healthy if you shop wisely. Can be different every day. Can be hot or cold. The possibilities are endless. Sandwiches are the best.

It's called a sandwich.

Here in the Netherlands a lot of people just eat sandwiches. I usually take them with me to work. Not a lot of effort

You can just... not? Having two larger meals a day isn't that weird.

Cooking takes SO MUCH TIME when you're single. But eating out is so expensive. It sucks.

I disagree. I like cooking and since I'm working from home I can make something nice and fast at home for lunch. But I probably would have agreed back then when I worked at the office.

Someone needs to raise their sandwich game.

I just cook bigger portions for dinner and eat that as lunch

There is another option.

Just going to put this out there, cook too much the previous night, don't eat all the dinner you cooked. Place the remainder into some form of container; transport said container to work with you the next day.

Lunch is sorted when you make your dinner!

Yes, eventually it ends when you’re promoted to middle management and you have to forage for granola bars and cookies during the few seconds you get between meetings. Stay an IC for as long as you can.

£4 sounds pretty cheap if it's a decent meal

This thread just oozes of early adults that don't understand how to spend 30 minutes preparing meals

I mostly eat leftovers from last night's dinner for lunch.

If you want to minimize cleanup and effort, just use a rice cooker.

• Costs 30€
• Put in rice and lentils at a ratio of your chosing, cook with oil and salt
• Optionally spices and tomato paste
• Put in frozen veggies either in a steaming basket or directly in the rice
• Chuck in an onion (quartered if you're lazy) and some garlic
• Yoghurt on the side

Congratulations you now have a healthy, cheap meal you can make at home or at work. If you eat directly out of the cooker you only need to clean your spoon. No cutting board needed either.

Imagine your biggest realization as an adult being a wrong opinion.

Look I'm not saying that cooking your own lunch is a prerequisite for being an adult. However complaining about the quality of prepared food while not acknowledging you could just cook is sure as hell immature.

The trick is being able to eat the same meal for the entire day. Cook once and eat it throughout the day. lol

I look forward to lunch every day. I make myself a wrap with some sort of oven cooked filling and a bunch of fresh veggies and some apple slices and a small bag of wasabi peas for dessert.

Most of my lunches are leftovers, but many of them are things like a burger or a bratwurst that I can cook with little effort. Or I can buy something.

Imagine complaining about £4 for lunch, I'm lucky if I get out for under $20.

Honestly they should just make nutrition bricks. Just combining nutrients into a brick. It could even be modular so you can add/remove various nutrients based on your nutritional needs. The perfect life would be working for the nutrition brick manufacturer and then going home to eat some nice nutrition bricks.

Some of us are given free meals to eat in our paid meal breaks.

Nothing fancy though. Most times, the chef only makes a starter or a dessert. Rarely both.

Learn how to cook. It’s not that hard to throw something together that’s good after being microwaved. The other day I made some bitter-orange chicken with rice. It was 30 minutes waiting and 4 minutes coating the chicken in the pan with the sauce.

Sandwiches are never a bad option.

Me, living in France, where a cafeteria room is mandatory, 1-2h long lunchs are the norm and your employer has to give you at least 4-5€/day to buy lunch:

It's not even an age thing, but more an economic issue, I never ran into this as an issue when the cost of eating out was affordable. Don't feel like prepping lunch the night before? Screw it, I'll pickup something during my lunch break for $3-4. But now that $3-4 is $10+

Is this some sort of British joke that I am too Indian to understand?

Edit: There was a bit of miscommunication it seems. My comment was on the food themselves and not the price.

There's a variety of lunches that are cheap and insanely easy though:

• Stir fry with leftover rice, an egg, and some frozen veggies
• Sandwich with a piece of fruit or some veggies
• Leftover soup heated up on the stove (or in the microwave if ya nasty)
• Cold pasta dishes like pasta salad with leftover protein thrown on top
• Charcuterie plate with cold cuts, crackers, cheeses, and jams
• Salad with cold leftover proteins
• Leftover fried chicken straight out the fridge, as God intended

Like sure, some of these things rely on having leftovers laying around to dress up a bit, but I think that's a reasonable thing to expect of most people.

In Brazil, if you work more that 6hs a day, the company have to give you lunch. The majority of them, give you a pre paid debit card that can be used in restaurants. This mean that they are a lot of money there that can be used in restaurants, so any office building have lots of restaurants around.

From my union contract, I get 40R daily to lunch, and the restaurant I go they serve "prato feito" (beans, rice, salad, meat) for 25, and use the rest for some icecream or to eat something with my wife at weekends.

If you're not eating a croque monsieur for lunch, that's your fault, and you deserve to be miserable