Benefits of a Lunch Co-op

Why start a lunch co-op?

We share some reasons why we think a lunch co-op is so great. Here is a round-up of some of the many benefits we’ve found to being part of a lunch cooperative:

Variety
When trying to eat healthy, homemade lunches many of us like to get organised and ‘meal prep’ in advance. Some people choose to make all of their meals on a Sunday night and box them up in tupperware to store in the fridge until they need them. Whilst this is a great way to reduce cooking/prep time during the week, it often means eating the same thing for lunch every day. Not to mention the fact that by Friday that salad really isn’t still fresh! By teaming up with your work colleagues you’ll get something completely different for lunch everyday, which means a more balanced and nutritious diet!

Experimenting
As we have two pescatarians in our group, everything we make is either pescatarian or veggie. We also try to experiment with gluten free, refined sugar free and vegan recipes. Learning about these different diets has been really rewarding and means that we get to experiment with new ingredients (quinoa, nut butters, chickpea flour) that we might not otherwise have used.

Convenience
Despite the best intentions with healthy eating, sometimes by Thursday or Friday (or even Wednesday) life often gets in the way and you might not have time to be preparing healthy packed lunches. What we love about lunch co-op is that on those days when you really don’t want to think about cooking or you might be having a stressful time at work and would normally just reach for the meal deal – one of your lovely work friends will serve you up a healthy and tasty meal!

Mental wellbeing
It’s this social side of sharing lunch which is also a fantastic benefit. We all know we shouldn’t eat lunch at our desks, well when you’re part of a lunch co-op ‘lunch’ is the highlight of the day. A chance to get away from your desk, forget about work and relax. When you go back to your desk you’ll feel refreshed and ready to take on the afternoon.

Save money
For those of us who normally choose to buy lunch out the cost can really add up. If you spend £3-£5 a day then that can add up to £25 a week. Being part of the lunch co-op I bring leftovers in on one day and the others I get my food made for me, so that costs me nothing. On our cooking day we try not to spend more than £5 on ingredients for making lunch. Which for four people and given the yummy dishes we can create is a bargain and a saving of £20 a week! We also experiment with healthy recipes using just ingredients from the store cupboard which is even cheaper.

Physical health
As well as losing a few pounds, we’ve found we have a lot more energy. With that energy we’ve been more motivated to exercise, many of us take part in bootcamps, walking, spinning, running and swimming to keep fit – we find doing these activities together as well is great motivation.

It very common to have a slump in the afternoon and feel really tired but eating food that is made from scratch as far as possible, avoids this slump. We think there’s also something to be said for eating tasty, homemade food – complex, natural flavours make you feel fuller for longer so when you get home from work you aren’t starving and ruin all that good work on snacks.

Grabbing a meal deal for lunch might be convenient but packaged, processed food contains loads of chemicals and hidden sugar. We’ve seen a lot of articles about sugar in the media and chefs like Jamie Oliver are doing a fantastic job to educate people on what is really in their food. But making your lunches from scratch everyday is hard work and most people really struggle to find the time to do it – that’s why a lunch co-op is the perfect solution as you only need to prepare lunch for one day. An optimum number of people to form a lunch co-op is 4 or 5 but actually you could start one with just 2 people and that will drastically cut down the time you spend cooking as well as bringing you all of the benefits we’ve talked about.

We know we aren’t perfect when it comes to making everything from scratch (the odd pot of hummus or shop bought pita here and there) but we think it’s important to not get too bogged down in cutting out certain foods because food it there to be enjoyed! Life is all about balance, so we aim to make healthy balanced meals without spending hours slaving in the kitchen, they also need to be easy to transport and put together at work!

If you need any inspiration on what to cook, have a look at our instagram for pictures of our lunches and read our blog posts for recipes. If you’ve been motivated to start a lunch co-op share your pictures with us on instagram using #lunchcoop or email us at thelunchcoop@gmail.com.