“Ooooh! What have you got today?” came the question from the next desk. In what had become a daily workplace ritual, Kendrick craned his neck to see what was in my stylish lunchbox.
“It’s a Palak Tofu Paneer curry with brown rice,” I responded smugly. One of the great joys of being married to a trained dietitian and chef is being able to show your lunches off to everyone with unabashed pride.
I could literally sense the envy pulsating at me from across the office. Nonchalantly, I stirred the rice into the delicious green concoction and heartily tucked in.
Disposable Lifestyle
Kendrick is pretty much the quintessential millennial. If if you can’t do it via an app, it pretty much doesn’t exist for him. When I was younger, people used to lament that kids nowadays don’t know where their food comes from. Kendrick essentially believes that food pretty much just arrives at your desk or front door within 30 minutes of ordering it on your mobile phone. My, how quickly the world is changing.
Every day I would watch Kendrick and his ilk wait with bated breath for the Uber Eats delivery. Once the familiar brown bag magically materialised, they would chow down with gusto on a staggering array of exotic foods. By the end of the week, the office rubbish bins were mostly overflowing with a slightly less exotic array of plastic, foam and paper detritus as testimony to the consumer excesses of the age.
At some point, I started thinking: Aside from the insane cost and questionable nutritional merits of my colleagues’ gastronomic habits, surely all that plastic packaging can’t be good for you? So, I started to do a little bit of research. As it turns out, it most certainly is NOT good for you, or for the planet.
The Dark Side of Lunch
Foodservice packaging accounts for 1.3% of all solid waste by weight. That might not sound like a huge number but think about it for a minute…if you start to consider all the food, plastic, green waste, paper and myriad other items that we toss away on a daily basis, that is actually a surprisingly large amount for a category of items that few of us would give much thought. It certainly results in untold thousands of tons of material that end up in landfill annually.
This was becoming quite the worry. I really started to sweat when I discovered that harmful materials from plastic packaging could leach into the food that it contains, especially if the food is hot, acidic, salty or spicy. Recent research shows that more toxic material such as BPA and Phthalates leach into our food than was previously thought. Furthermore, even tiny amounts may have significantly greater negative effects on our bodies than were at first realised.
Mummy Knows Best…As Usual
Armed with my new-found knowledge, I eagerly informed my wife when I got home that something had to be done! Our kids and I might be ingesting these horrible nasties every day! She smiled at me smugly, as if I was a chuffed 3rd grader who had just discovered that 12 x 12 = 144. As usual, she was a step (or five) ahead of me. As it turns out, she had done her research and the gorgeous Prêt-à-Paquet eco-friendly lunchboxes that we have all been taking to work and school for some time now are completely BPA and Phthalate free! So, not only were we ensuring that potentially harmful chemical are not leaching into our food, but we are saving huge amounts of material from going to landfill.
Pret a Paquet Eco-Friendly Lunchboxes – Save The Planet in Style!
Prêt-à-Paquet eco-friendly lunchboxes come in a variety of formats and colours. Each has its own stylish neoprene cover that maintains the food’s temperature so that it remains hot or cool for longer. Designed by nutritionists with sizing that ensures perfect portion control, they really are the complete package (excuse the pun), when it comes to packing a healthy lunch for your family that is good for them and the environment.
If only we can come up with a Prêt-à-Paquet lunchbox app, there might be hope for the Kendricks of this world!
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