Millions of Brits have EXACTLY the same thing for lunch every day, it emerged today.
A study into the eating habits of the country’s workers found one in eight tucks into an identical meal every lunch time.
In fact, seventy per cent of these unadventurous lunch eaters have been eating the same thing for as long as they can remember.
The most popular recurring lunch proved to be the humble ham sandwich followed by the equally uninspiring cheese sandwich, according to the research by Wonderful Pistachios.
Of the 2000 workers polled, 71 per cent said that they have a packed lunch every day, one fifth have something shop bought and one in ten eat in the staff canteen.
Seven in ten people said they eat the same thing day after day mainly because ‘it’s easy’, while cheapness and simply following the routine were also big factors.
A disillusioned 50 per cent of those polled said that their lunches were dull yet one in six never eat anything different or new while clocking time up in the office.
One quarter even admitted to having a weekly food routine, where a particular day of the week means a certain type of lunch.
And one in four admits to being completely stuck in a rut with their diet.
A spokesman for Wonderful Pistachios said: “We’re often creatures of habit and it’s understandable that so many of us stick to what we know.
“But with nearly half of the study finding their lunches boring or many stuck in a rut with their diet, it seems there’s less of a focus on lunch and more towards snacking throughout the day.
“As working hours become increasingly longer and busier, we have even more reason to make sure the food we’re eating each day is nutritional as well as something to look forward to.”
The results also revealed four in ten people think the traditional lunch break is a thing of the past with heavy workloads and time constraints meaning the average worker has to ‘squeeze in’ the time to eat for a third of their breaks.
43 per cent of people say their lunch ‘hours’ have got noticeably shorter overall than when they first started working.
In fact, the average person feels they take 20 minutes less of a lunch break now than when they first started out in the working world.
With the traditional lunch hour fading from Britain’s offices, a new ‘snacking schedule’ is taking over as the time to eat – forty per cent of workers say the afternoon snack is a staple part of their diet.
One in five people cited 11.00am as the time that they are most likely to turn to food to help them through the day, with 3.00pm being the next most popular slot.
The Wonderful Pistachios spokesman added: “It’s so easy to get stuck in a food rut with time constraints and money being the main causes, but trying out a new snack doesn’t have to mean investing a lot of cash or prep time in the morning.”
