Quick and Nutritious Brown Bag Lunch Ideas

A brown bag lunch means different things to different people. To some, it may bring back memories of school and the exchange of food during recess. To others, all it may mean is boring and monotonous lunches, that one ate because one had to. Well, we're about to change that for you, and if you're lucky, even for your kids. We have some ideas for quick and nutritious ones, so that you can have a wholesome lunch and enjoy it too.

We're all witness to how it's becoming extremely difficult to balance our personal and professional lives, and also take care of our health at the same time. We have grown to underestimate the importance of healthy meals and it will soon begin to affect us adversely, if it hasn't already. What can we do to prevent this from happening? For starters, we can limit the 'eating out' and 'ordering in' of food as much as we can.

How else will you eat if you're going to give up lunch? Well, there is something called 'packing your lunch and taking it to work' remember? Now don't worry, it's not rocket science. The following sections will give you a fair idea of how you can pack yourself a nourishing lunch without having to slave over the stove for hours!

If there's one food that everyone loves and doesn't mind eating at any time, it's sandwiches. It's also one of the easiest and quickest foods to fix up. So, what are your options for sandwiches? Well let's see:

• You can use lean meats and complement them with slices of low fat cheese.
• You can also have some fresh veggies like tomatoes and bell peppers, dusted with a little salt and pepper in the sandwich.

• Hard boil an egg, slice it, dress it with some low fat mayonnaise and dust it with some pepper or any seasoning of your choice. It'll make for a delicious sandwich.
• If you don't mind something sweet for lunch, you can try buttering one slice of the sandwich and applying fruit jam to the other. Dee-licious!

We're focusing on healthy meals here, so let's not forget that we need to use different kinds of whole grain bread for making the sandwiches, wraps, etc. You can even go for healthy tortillas using the above fillings.

Well we couldn't leave out salads, could we? Salads are invariably the first thing that comes to mind when we think of healthy meals. So, what are we waiting for? Let's see some delightful and healthy salad ideas.

• Greens: As the name suggests, you can stock up on a lot of fresh greens when you go grocery shopping. Green leafy vegetables, along with cucumbers and the appropriate salad dressing (need we keep saying low fat?) are not only delectable, but also extremely healthy to eat.

• Reds: Carrots, bell peppers, beets and tomatoes! These are more than enough to provide you a satisfying lunch. How? Throw in a little salt, pepper, some olive oil and a little bit of balsamic vinegar and you're good to go!

• Browns: Sausages and sprouts! The two S's that can make for a salubrious lunch and yet not take hours to prepare. All you have to do is stir fry the sausages for a bit and garnish them with a little dressing and bread if you want.

As for the other 'S', you can pick an assortment of sprouts, wash them, boil them if you wish, mix them and add a little bit of salt, oregano and squeeze the juice of a full lemon in it, mix it and enjoy it!

Who said leftovers aren't fun? In fact, some foods taste surprisingly better the next morning, don't you agree? It could be last night's brown rice, or a special pasta you made. It could be spaghetti and meat balls or even a chicken casserole.

Whatever you're cooking for dinner, cook a little extra and keep it aside for lunch the next day. In the morning, all you have to do is remove it from the refrigerator, thaw it or heat it. If you have a microwave at your workplace, then nothing like it. Simply heat it up just before you eat it!

Apart from these ideas, you can also opt for ready to eat frozen meals that are available at supermarkets. Go for healthy ones or at least the ones that look healthy. As for desserts, you can carry a carton of juice or low fat flavored milk or yogurt instead of a cola. So, there you go, a whole bunch of ideas to make your own lunch and a much healthier one!