Lunch: the ABC gives five tips for a healthy lunch

While many consider breakfast the most important meal of the day, lunch is equally essential and it's often forgotten in our busy work schedules.

Lack of time and preparation often means we're reaching for convenient options that are more processed and expensive — and it's our wellbeing and afternoon productivity that can suffer.

Takeaway and pre-prepared foods usually come with more added fat, sugar and salt than the meals we make at home.

Over the course of a week, and years, these additives really start to weigh heavily on our health.

Even swapping just one or two bought lunches per week for a homemade meal will make a significant difference to your general health, your wallet and the environment.

Now, home-packed lunches might bring back memories of squashed sandwiches and brown apple quarters from school, but these five tips will help make packing a healthy and delicious lunchbox simple.

1. Make lunch at dinner

You don't have to rise at the crack of dawn to prepare a delicious lunch — leftovers are an easy and economical option.

Making extra serves when cooking dinner will save you both time and money. Then all you have to do is grab a container from the fridge as you run out the door in the morning.

Leftovers will usually keep for 24-72 hours in the fridge or up to several weeks in the freezer.

Try making a pot of minestrone soup or a large veggie casserole, eat one serve for dinner, pop one serve in the fridge for lunch, and one serve in the freezer for later.

After one week of making dinners, you could have work lunches prepared for nearly three weeks and never have to eat the same thing two days or meals in a row.

2. Use leftovers creatively

Leftovers can easily be used to create a different but equally delicious lunch in no time.

Roasted, stir-fried or sautéed vegetables can be added to almost anything. Put them in a sandwich with some pesto or cheese for a cafe-worthy toastie, add them to another night's leftover pasta for salad, or try them on top of plain tortilla chips for quick and healthy office nachos.

Or experiment with using a leftover stir fry or roast as the base for a tasty salad. Assemble by placing your leftovers at the bottom of a container or jar with a salad dressing (the sauce or oils from your leftovers may become a dressing that's free of added hidden sugar or salt in store-bought dressing), and add some leafy greens on top to keep them crisp.

3. Use a whole grain or legume base to make hearty lunches

Forget expensive protein balls and bars — whole grains such as quinoa or buckwheat, and legumes such as beans and chickpeas, are nature's original convenience superfood.

Whole grains and legumes are packed with protein and fibre to keep us fuller for longer and are much cheaper — and easier to prepare and store — than meat.

Make grains and legumes the hero of the lunch by incorporating them into curries, stews or casseroles, then use up older or wilted produce in the bottom of your crisper instead of throwing them out.

This will maximise not only the nutrient profile of your lunch, but also how far the weekly grocery shop will go.

4. Front-load your veg intake

We're all guilty of falling short of the recommended five serves of vegetables and two serves of fruit per day. But bringing lunch can be a great way to front-load our fresh fruit and veggie intake to hit these goals more easily.

Packing our lunchtime meal with veg also provides valuable micronutrients such as B vitamins in leafy greens and legumes, which are essential for concentration and brain function.

The high fibre content and slow-release energy of vegetables also helps to keep you fuller for longer and avoid the dreaded 3pm slump.

Aim for three serves of vegetables and a piece of fruit at lunch and you're over half way there.

5. Invest in a couple of good-quality containers

Nothing makes the idea of BYO lunch less appealing than the idea of a flimsy lunchbox leaking at the bottom of a handbag or backpack.

A few sets of well-sealed containers will make it significantly easier to prep and carry lunch, even if it's haphazardly tossed in a bag while running out the door.

Having more than one container allows you to keep a few options in the fridge or freezer, ready to go at any time (see tip one to avoid lunch menu boredom).

You don't have to spend big money on fancy containers but it's important they are made from BPA-free plastic that won't disintegrate or leech in the dishwasher.

Glass jars are also a great option as glass is food safe and jar lids will stick tight, even after high temperature washing.

You could save money and reduce your household waste even further by reusing jars from groceries as lunch containers.

To sum up…

Life is busy but with a little effort we can make big changes to our physical health.

Over time, swapping the average takeaway lunch for a BYO meal could save you hundreds of dollars a month and reduce the amount of single-use plastics in our landfill and oceans.

Dr Sandro Demaio is a doctor and researcher with a passion for disease prevention, nutrition and global health. He also loves to cook and recently published a cookbook.

From the ABC: planetary health diet.

Why the Western diet needs to shift to a 'planetary health diet' in the age of climate change

By Rosemary Stanton and Kris Barnden

The "Western diet", with its high proportions of meat and highly refined, processed foods, contributes to a long list of health problems including obesity, heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, many types of cancer, mood disorders and dementia.

This unhealthy diet is also a big contributor to the ongoing devastation of our planet. Agriculture contributes up to 30 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and uses 70 per cent of fresh water, while land clearing and industrial farming methods involve large amounts of herbicides and pesticides that pollute our rivers, wetlands and coral reefs.

A recent report published by EAT and authoritative medical journal The Lancet warns that we must significantly transform the way we eat and grow our food. Failure to do so will cause an increasing proportion of the global population, which is expected to hit 10 billion people by 2050, to suffer from malnutrition and preventable disease. Today's children will inherit a planet that has been severely degraded.

The report, which has brought together 37 experts from 16 countries, has for the first time set scientific targets that call for nothing short of a revolution in our farm-to-fork practices to address these seemingly colossal challenges.

The report calls for a "flexitarian" approach to eating which caters for meat eaters, as well as vegetarians and vegans.

The "planetary health diet" recommends doubling global consumption of vegetables, fruits, nuts and legumes, ditching refined grains in favor of wholegrains, and at least halving our consumption of red meat and sugar.

So what does a 21st-century nutritional and delicious meal that boosts health and protects the planet look like?

Here are some suggestions for those who are unaware of the delicious alternatives to meals dominated by meat.

Let's start with breakfast

Homemade or good-quality muesli with fruit and yoghurt or, in cooler weather, cold-cooked oats with dried fruit and pepitas.

An occasional meal of egg, mushrooms, tomatoes or beans or a Middle Eastern shakshuka (spiced eggs) for a weekend special.

Meat-free lunches

Wholegrain and seeded sandwiches with avocado, salad or vegies, plus falafel or a portion of cheese (there are daily limits of 500ml of milk or the equivalent in yoghurt or cheese).

Hot or cold soups, or salads with legumes such as delicious blue-green lentils.

The weekly limit for red meat is just under 100g for beef and lamb, and the same for pork, but either can be substituted for the other.

That's two dinners with modest servings of meat suitable for a stir-fry, or as part of a winter casserole bolstered with plenty of the highly-recommended legumes and vegetables.

Chicken once or twice a week (either one big meal of 200g or two smaller meals of 100g). That could be one small serve of roast chicken with roasted vegies, or an enchilada (cooked chicken with vegetables, chilli, herbs and kidney beans tucked into a wholegrain corn or wheatmeal wrap).

Fish or other seafood also has a maximum consumption of 200g a week. That might be a single fillet of fish with a mango, chilli and mint coulis, served with a large plate of seasonal vegetables and one of the two weekly potatoes made into chips cooked in olive oil.

For another seafood meal, perhaps prawns with homemade satay sauce (making it yourself ensures a decent amount of peanut) with brown rice and a large salad.

Alternatives to meat

For omnivores — and Australians are one of the highest meat consumers in the world per capita — that leaves just one or two meatless dinners to think about.

There are many satisfying and easy alternatives to meat. How about wholemeal pasta with pesto and a big salad with greens, cherry tomatoes and avocado?

Or maybe a couple of Indian curries? Recipes abound, so try a chana masala (made with chickpeas), plus a dry cauliflower curry with rice and sambals (try flaked coconut, tomatoes, cucumber, coriander, mint and natural yoghurt).

You can also make full use of herbs, spices and extra virgin olive oil for cooking or on salads.

What about snacks?

No surprises here: junk foods are out, but fruit and nuts make excellent snack foods for those who need a little extra during the day.

The EAT-Lancet diet will require behaviour change for many Australians.

Education about the need to change eating habits is vital, but personal action is only one piece of the solution, which may not be readily available to everyone.

If you have been choosing processed foods high in fat and sugar since childhood, if you don't have the time to prepare fresh food or the means to afford it, or if you live in a place where it's just not available, then "choice" does not begin to describe the uphill battle to put healthy food in front of your family.

Farmers and retailers wanting to supply sustainably-grown food also face considerable hurdles in a system that has been skewed in favour of large-scale, industrial food production with low diversity.

Governments need to lead the way with policy changes that reflect modern-day challenges to the way we produce and consume our food.

It starts with the farm

The food revolution we need requires substantial agricultural innovation that must focus on improving efficiency and sustainability in existing farming lands; restoring degraded lands; a zero-expansion policy of agricultural land to enable natural ecosystems to thrive, and halving food waste.

The EAT-Lancet report also tells us that better governance of our land and seas is needed to protect the biodiversity that supports life. This is consistent with calls in Australia for the next elected federal government to develop new national environmental laws with independent authority to protect our environment and the ability to produce food into the future, in a way that does not cost us the planet and humanity's future.

If our next elected government also puts money into making local fresh food readily available and affordable, subsidises and promotes sustainable farming methods, and protects our environment, we will reap the benefits of a healthier population.

We will also do our share of avoiding catastrophic damage to the planet from runaway climate change and other environmental threats.

Only then can we evolve from the current lose-lose scenario with poor diets that result in malnutrition, ongoing damage to ecosystems and worsening climate change, to a win-win scenario for people, animal life and the planet.

Dr Rosemary Stanton is a nutritionist and dietitian and part of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Doctors for the Environment Australia. Dr Kris Barnden is an obstetrician and a member of Doctors for the Environment Australia.

10 simple habits that encourage healthy eating

10 simple habits that encourage healthy eating

Dr Sandro Demaio                    

When it comes to deciding what to cook and eat, many of us can get overwhelmed quickly — and I get it.

Whether it's on social media, television or even on food packaging itself, we're constantly bombarded with complex and often conflicting advice about what we should be eating.

But it doesn't have to be this hard.

Good food should be easy. It's about keeping things simple so we can make the best food choices throughout the day — quickly and affordably.

Instead of a rule book on what not to eat, follow these guiding principles to help you live well and feel great.

1. Eat ingredients, not products

A fail-safe way to eat well is to choose whole foods over products.

This doesn't mean we need to make absolutely everything from scratch, but choosing more fresh foods and fewer packaged ones will go a long way to improving our nutrition.

Fresh foods are generally higher in micronutrients and fibre, and will help us avoid hidden added fats, sugar and salt.

2. Start with vegetables

Get used to filling the plate with at least 50 per cent veg, as eating more vegetables is one of the most important things we can do for our health.

Work out which vegetables you love and enjoy these regularly rather than trying to eat them all, and pile plates high with veggies first when serving up.

When it comes to snacking, cut and store vegetables to make them an easier choice.

3. Embrace diversity

Eating a wide range of fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and pulses provides a wide range of vitamins and minerals.

Aim for a range of colours, add lentils and beans to dishes, and try a different leafy green in salads each week.

By eating a range of foods, you don't need to worry about missing individual nutrients.

Embracing diversity in what we eat means we're also less likely to need expensive extra nutrition supplements.

4. Break up with added sugar

Ditching 'free sugars' — those added to products or concentrated in products either by the consumer or the manufacturer — is a great step to take to good health.

A few simple ways to quickly break up with sugar is to avoid sugary drinks and eat whole fruits rather than choosing juice.

It's important to learn the many other names for sugar on labels, such as fruit juice concentrate or glucose, and question healthy claims on packaged foods — they're usually trying to distract you from reading the nutrient label.

Be okay with sugar sometimes, because it can still be enjoyed occasionally.

5. Be smart about fats

While fats have had a bad rap in the past, healthy omega-3 and omega-6 fats are essential to our health — supporting our cell membranes, brain development and heart health.

Our bodies don't make these fats; they're only available in our diets and so it's important to choose the right foods.

Oily fish such as salmon and tuna, avocados, and nuts and seeds (such as chia seeds, pine nuts, walnuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds and cashews) will do the trick.

6. Cook and eat with the ones you love

Science proves that eating with others results in us eating less, and maybe even better.

Dining with friends and family tends to slow down our eating, allowing our stomach to send a message to our brain when we are full.

It also offers an opportunity to connect and check in with loved ones, supporting mental wellbeing and overall happiness.

7. Keep an eye on your portions

Even when eating well, eating too much will hinder your health.

Simple ways to manage not only the quality but the quantity of our diet is to serve smaller portions and return for seconds if desired, use smaller plates, go slow and do mindful checks on your appetite.

Lastly, if the plate is still looking a little light on, opt for more veggies instead of adding more pasta, rice or meat to the plate.

8. Halt the salt

A high intake of salt is associated with high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.

Much of our salt intake is accounted for in processed products including snack foods, fast foods, prepared sauces and processed meats.

An easy way to manage your salt intake is to live by the first principal of whole foods over products. But when needed, check the nutrition panel of these foods and aim for less than 120mg of sodium per 100g.

9. Choose water

Drinking water assists all bodily functions. It's filling, hydrating and helps with concentration and focus.

It's also one of the easiest and cheapest things we can do for our health.

Start each morning with two glasses of water, enjoy water with each meal, and invest in a reusable water bottle so water is always handy, available and free.

10. With alcohol, less is more

While most of us enjoy a drink from time to time, alcohol is associated with increased risks of a number of cancers, heart disease, mental illness and more.

If you've heard that a glass or two of red wine is actually good for us, this is sadly not true, with science generally stating that no level of drinking is safe.

To keep it simple and balanced, a good rule of thumb is to keep most days alcohol-free.

To sum up…

OK, it's a long list but each one is achievable for us all. Choose a few goals and start with those, then work on adding more.

Take your time and be flexible and understanding, as we all have setbacks sometimes.

Best of luck — and here's to your health!

Dr Sandro Demaio is a doctor and researcher with a passion for disease prevention, nutrition and global health. He also loves to cook and recently published a cookbook.