Wait... did you just take the second derivative of your lunch?
very often in life, we mistaken boredom for peacefulness. a simple and stress-free life can be just as, if not more, rewarding then the hectic one we leave behind.
I'm not saying nobody should eat out, but to do it every day just seems wasteful. And I find cooking to be quite a bit more enriching than takeout.
Number 1 was social. People went out for lunch in groups, and it was an "enforced" break in the day. It's a cultural issue that can be hard to replicate for "lunch bringers" in some places. Not so fun to eat alone in a drab lunch room if your friends and peers are down the street having pizza, I guess.
Number 2 was time, or at least the perception of time. Tech people (in my context) tend to work long hours and whether you are trying to maintain a social life or bring up a couple of kids, once you add that to work hours there isn't a ton left. More than one person I know had commented that they didn't find the time to make and bring lunches that didn't leave them feeling left out. It's easy to bring a crappy sandwich, harder to bring something you really enjoy. At least for them.
This is what I liked while working in HP. We had a canteen where pretty much everybody went. You could buy a number of simple cheaper meals, a fancy expensive meal, or bring your own thing. Everybody could still sit together.
And if everyone chooses to eat cheap lunch, we could all just work less, and the system would be balanced again ;).
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader%E2%80%93Meinhof_effec...
3 mentions in the same day out of a total of 8 mentions ever on HN (not including the 2 meta-comments). User dcomp noticed it also.
(oops, just bumped those numbers up one)
Heteroscedasticity is like changing variance.
Nice! I hadn't thought about that.
Both seem related to a kind of intelligent mindfulness.
I wish I could have pingado (espresso with milk) and pão francês na chapa (a grilled bread with margarine or cream cheese). Dinner would be the left overs of lunch, of just some salad, bread, turkey... never get tired of it.
eating the same meal twice in a row makes me not want it again for weeks. there are also very few foods that i won't eat, so maybe that's correlated with the love of variety.
(variety in) food is such a simple pleasure for me that i guess i will never understand this behavior.
No one on r/fitness or /fit/ is going to call you crazy for eating the same thing each day.
But when you're a vegetarian (as I was), to maintain a reasonably nutritious diet requires some repetition. For example, getting certain protein and nutrients in one meal so you don't have to think about it in the others.
I'm no longer a strict vegetarian (just mostly), but the diet habits I learned mean that my overall diet is better, lower calorie.
I now think it's important for EVERYONE to do strict vegetarianism. Not for ethical or environmental concerns, but simply because it forces you to think about what you're eating and to read labels (and thus learn that the "vegetarian" tacos you're eating have gelatin (meat product) in the sour cream).
In addition, being a strict vegetarian in a sustainable way requires learning about what your body requires.
After a few months (or however long it requires to build a stable, nutritious diet), you'll be extremely well informed. Of course, you could also just read all this stuff on various articles, but trial by fire is an excellent way to learn.
Glad you were able to stick to bringing lunch. I always end up being too lazy and enjoy the break from the office or home office. If I don’t have variety I will become pretty cranky.
Reaching consensus on where to eat with my group of lunchmates definitely caused stress, especially after we'd all gotten mostly burned out on the nearby options.
Honestly amazed this is the default position for anyone. What situation of living prompts this?
This also meant I would go out for lunch each day as I didn't want to carry food with me on my commute. The cost savings of riding to work vs driving and paying for parking meant I was ahead. If I took public transport and brought lunch from home it would have worked out slightly cheaper but taken 30mins longer each way.
Sure I could have carried lunch with me on my cycle commute but and saved more money, but then I would have enjoyed the ride less. I figure I would still be ahead compared to people who don't cycle and pay for gym classes/memberships.
As a single person who liked variety and worked a lot, it was a slam dunk: fast, tasty, and relatively cheap.
For several months, I brought the same thing: granola, yogurt, and chopped melon. I love food and love variety, so I was really surprised to discover that I simply didn't get tired of it or resentful. Every day, I looked forward to having it.
Every now and then I would have a bowl of canned soup instead, but that was literally the only variety I had. Like others in the article, I found the peacefulness and simplicity of not having to stress out about where to go for lunch more than made up for the monotony. In fact, knowing all day what I was going to have for lunch led to a greater anticipation of it.
I think this worked for me because I was only doing this for lunch and not for every meal of the day. So this actually increased the meta-variety of my eating: dinner meals were varied and lunch meals were not. So I got to experience both repetition and novelty.
It was a really interesting experience that I'd encourage others to try. In general, I think repetition and ritual tends to be undervalued in Western culture, but has always been an important part of the human experience.