Lunchtime Evolution

A Bread-lover's Journey

I love bread. And I love lunchtime, always have and always will. Besides satisfying the obvious hunger pangs around noon, lunchtime also signals a shift in the day; a pivotal point of sorts.

During my school days, I would devise mind games to make the time go faster so as to climb into my six cheese and tomato sandwiches, safely wrapped in wax paper within a Checkers shopping packet. Staring at the classroom clock would always slow down time; seeing how long I could hold my breath for during Afrikaans class almost always sped things up though!



Tertiary studies were similar, although staying awake in class was always a challenge. With longer breaks than in high school due to the lecturing timetable, I would often have time to kill, resulting in walking forays into greater Cape Town and consuming my daily bread in some interesting places.

One thing I noticed - and failed to comprehend - was the general feeling of lethargy I would feel after lunch. And the pending hunger before. If staying awake during photogrammetry class was a challenge, not nodding off at some of my later "mundane" jobs was a daily battle. This "condition" would improve in time to more mentally challenging and purposeful pursuits, but I can't help but marvel at how tired and lethargic I felt throughout my twenties.

A few years ago, I read a fascinating book called the Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson, who endorses the lifestyles of our Paleolithic ancestors. Unsurprisingly, a large part of Sisson's writing involves diet and the critical role it plays in our overall health. A recurring theme with Sisson is the dangers of excessive ingestion of processed carbohydrates and sugar, which has given rise to the obesity epidemic and increasing cases of diabetes.

Whilst I'm unwilling to become a fully-fledged "health-nut" or dive headlong into the latest Noakes diet - everything in moderation, right? - Mark's message struck home: while having always eaten well, my staple breakfast and lunch choices were loaded in carbohydrates. Starting the day with a couple of bowls of Weetbix, milk and sugar had been a lifelong tradition. Lunches would revolve around bread or rolls, with either ham or cheese and tomato. Certainly appetizing and offering immediate relief to my eleven-in-the-morning hunger, but certainly not practical or even healthy in the long run.

I love bread. All bread.

Whilst the message struck home, it took a long time to fully accept and I decided to gradually adapt to some alternative form of morning and midday sustenance as opposed to a "cold turkey" approach. What alternatives were there and would it be possible to survive without bread?

After a sort of adaptation period, I've managed to come up with the following basic formula, which I'm trying to develop as I learn the eating habits of others: keep it simple. This was probably my biggest concern in adapting my bread-and-cereal mantra for a healthier alternative. Nowadays my breakfast and lunch staples look something like this:

• Breakfast: a bowl of cut up fruit (any combination of pears, peaches, apples, bananas, spanspek etc) with a small topping of yoghurt.
• Lunch: pre-prepared (the night before) concoction of lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, marrows, some grated cheese, cucumbers, several boiled potatoes and any leftover vegetables/chicken in an ice cream tub and kept in the office fridge (with name written on the container in black koki-pen). If they are ripe and/or in season, I'll add in an avocado pear, before downing the lot sometime between 12 and 1pm daily. I often prepare enough food for two days, following the example of my Dad's two-week long supplies of homemade vegetable soup.

Lunch for two days - yet another use for ice-cream tubs.

I do still eat a limited amount of bread, but mainly on the weekends or at dinnertime. As the old story goes, a medieval king would dose himself with a small amount of poison on a daily basis. The reason: to build his immune system in order to ward off assassination attempts from deadly rivals!

My concerns about a.) Dying of hunger without cereal and bread and b.) Complicating breakfast and lunch options like some mad health zealot have been totally unfounded. Higher energy levels and a stronger immune system have been two of the most obvious results of this culinary adaptation. This piece makes me recall the dozen or so years I took an immune-boosting supplement to improve my overall heath with marginal results at best. But that is another story for another day.

In the meantime read one of Steve Tilford's latest blogs whilst I go and make sure that nobody has touched my beloved salad in the fridge.