Are you at the office, working from home, or on the go a lot and always have your hands full? Does your lunch often fall by the wayside, or do you end up grabbing a quick roll at the bakery, a pizza, or a kebab despite your good intentions? Many people often find themselves in a stressful situation at lunchtime, which can lead to a vicious cycle of suboptimal food choices and an afternoon slump. The good news is that there are many simple, time-saving, and delicious lunch alternatives that will keep you energized for the second half of the day.
Healthy recipes for everyday lunch? Keep it stress-free & simple!
When it comes to healthy eating habits, everyday situations can often be challenging. Lunchtime is frequently derailed by the day's hectic pace and unforeseen situations and tasks. People working from home or on-site at their workplace often struggle to enjoy a simple, healthy lunch. But even for people who are caring for children or pursuing fitness and aesthetic goals, the lunch break often feels too short to enjoy a lunch that provides sustained energy.
In fact, this perception often stems from a lack of the right tools, know-how, and preparation. You can put together a healthy lunch in almost any situation—even without meal prep. Here is how.
What exactly makes a healthy lunch?
First, let's define what a healthy lunch is. This can vary greatly depending on current dietary trends and differing opinions. Based on current scientific findings and practical experience, a healthy lunch is defined here as:
A healthy lunch always consists of a good source of protein (fish, meat, eggs, or alternatives such as rice-almond or sunflower protein, e.g., sunflower mince), vegetables (carrots, cucumber, broccoli, salad, zucchini...), a small amount of healthy fat (native oils, avocado, nuts...), and depending on body fat percentage and activity level, long-chain carbohydrates (potatoes, quinoa, red rice, millet...) may also be included.
The following applies: The lower the body fat percentage—especially around the midsection—and the greater the muscle mass, the more beneficial carbohydrates are for lunch. Therefore, people who sit a lot (e.g., when working from home) and people with more body fat around their midsection should not consume carbohydrates at lunch. This has a lot to do with blood sugar management
In addition, general guidelines (which also apply to other meals) should be followed:
The food should be gut-friendly and therefore contain no allergens such as gluten, dairy products or anti-nutrients , be sugar-free, and be as natural as possible (no industrially processed fats, additives, added sugars, etc.). Irritating substances that affect the gut also disrupt blood sugar, and high blood sugar at lunchtime leads to the well-known afternoon slump. Many people know the feeling after a plate of pasta. Protein and vegetables, on the other hand, keep you full and stabilize blood sugar.
Your healthy lunch—as an athlete, at the office, or on the go—how can you make it work?
First, remember: be prepared. You should at least try to plan ahead and perhaps think about how your week will look on Sunday and do your meal prep accordingly. If you already have a prepared, healthy lunch made of protein, vegetables, and healthy fat during your lunch break, you will save time and stress.
Of course, there are also situations that catch you by surprise, or you are on the go and haven't had the chance to organize a delicious, healthy lunch. People often overthink things and make them too complicated, but there are actually very simple solutions that you can put together using basic ingredients from the supermarket. Here are two examples of such a quick, healthy lunch:
- 1 package of beef ham (protein), leafy greens (vegetables), olives (fat), cucumber, salt, pepper, native olive oil (fat), and optionally rice cakes (carbohydrates): Spread the beef ham on a plate, top it with the leafy greens, a few slices of cucumber, and the olives, then season with salt, pepper, and olive oil, and snack on the rice cakes if desired.
- Vegetarian: 2–4 hard-boiled eggs (protein), 1 package of snack carrots (vegetables/fiber), a handful of nuts (fat), and optionally buckwheat crackers (gluten-free buckwheat crackers) as a carbohydrate source.
Of course, these are not elaborate gourmet meals, but they taste good and are a quick solution for a healthy lunch in hectic everyday situations. As previously mentioned, it is generally a good idea to prepare lunch in advance.
Healthy lunch recipes
It is efficient and practical to prepare several healthy lunches in one evening or over the weekend. This way, you can cook them in larger quantities, e.g., three portions at a time, and store them in Tupperware containers in the refrigerator.
In principle, you can put together lunch using a modular system:
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Choose a protein source :Meat (e.g., beef ham, ground beef, pastrami, chicken breast, cooked chicken breast slices, turkey, game meat, etc.), fish (salmon, trout, tuna, sea bass, etc.), eggs, sunflower or jackfruit mince, or a shake, e.g., rice protein or almond protein (sold as almond flour in stores). Cook, bake, or fry the protein source if necessary.
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Choose the right vegetable source :Broccoli, salad, cucumber, bell pepper, tomato, zucchini, fennel, kohlrabi, etc. Cook or chop them finely if necessary.
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Choose a good fat source :Nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, pistachios, pecans, etc.) or avocado, native plant oil, coconut oil, cocoa butter, tallow, or seeds.
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Choose good carbohydrates (only if needed, see above):
Quinoa, potatoes, rice, rice noodles, rice cakes, gluten-free bread, sweet potatoes, millet, buckwheat noodles, and so on.
A healthy lunch with chicken resulting from this could look like this, for example:
Sauté chicken breast strips, season them, and pack them in a Tupperware container with leafy greens, nuts, and some avocado. If you want to enjoy carbohydrates with it, you can boil a few potatoes; they also taste good cold and contain resistant starch after cooling anyway, so the carbohydrates will have less of an impact on your blood sugar.
Another simple example recipe for a healthy lunch with eggs that is perfect for working from home but also suitable for the office, because it does not need to be reheated, is as follows:
Image & text from: "Fit@Home" by Ines Schulz © Jochen Arndt and publisher: GU
Image: Jochen Arndt and publisher: GU
The recipe is also suitable as a healthy lunch to take with you when you are on the go.
In my book "FIT@HOME" you will find numerous other lunch recipes of this kind, as well as many tips and tools for easy meal prep and the organization of healthy meals. The book is available in all bookstores in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, as well as in numerous online shops.
Healthy lunch for weight loss—healthy low-carb lunch
The modular system shown above quickly reveals that you can easily put together a healthy, light lunch that is relatively low in carbohydrates:
A very simple example would be boiled broccoli with some native olive oil and a salmon fillet fried in tallow.
Whatever works great and is excellent for on the go is a sandwich made with low-carb bread, some tallow, turkey breast, beef ham, or smoked salmon, with a salad leaf and some vegan pesto. You could also snack on some dark chocolate (at least 90% cocoa content) and a few berries for dessert.
Low-carb shirataki noodles made from konjac flour also keep you perfectly full.
Anyone looking for a healthy, low-calorie lunch can use these noodles, which consist solely of fiber, to make a delicious beef mince bolognese and use it as a healthy lunch for work by simply reheating the ready-made low-carb noodles.
Quick healthy lunch for the Thermomix, microwave, or frying pan
In principle, anything that is prepared can be quickly reheated in various appliances. The microwave should rather be a last resort, as many valuable vitamins are destroyed there. Nevertheless, it is still a better solution than eating junk food. All the dishes described above that are eaten hot can easily be quickly reheated in a frying pan. If you have a Thermomix, it makes meal prep much easier, so you don't even have to cook in the traditional sense.
Simple healthy lunch—also vegetarian or vegan
Of course, it can also be made without meat or without any animal products. What you should generally pay attention to from a health perspective to avoid a nutrient deficiency can be read in the respective blog articles on vegan nutrition or vegetarian nutrition !
The Cashew Lemon Bowl with eggs above is a simple vegetarian example recipe. Egg dishes provide a healthy, vegetarian lunch. Sheep's cheese, goat cheese, or feta are also good sources of protein and fat for vegetarians, provided the gut is healthy. But you can also very easily put together a vegan lunch using the modular system above: soak sunflower mince according to the instructions beforehand, then fry it in olive oil in the frying pan, add finely chopped vegetables of your choice as well as chopped onions, and then pour over passata. Buckwheat noodles are suitable as a side dish if carbohydrates are part of the plan.
Conclusion on healthy lunch
A healthy lunch consists of high-quality protein, vegetables, and healthy fats and possibly long-chain carbohydrates, provided you exercise enough and have little body fat around your midsection.
You can put together such a lunch from a simple list of suitable foods. It is best to prepare the dishes in advance using meal prep to avoid getting into a stressful situation at lunchtime.
If that doesn't work out one day, there are simple solutions for putting together a healthy lunch from foods in the supermarket. By the way: a healthy lunch for children should contain the same components, but carbohydrates may always be part of their plan.