Feeding Your Inner Child (Like, LITERALLY Feeding Her)

I used to work with a woman (Hellllooo, Annie!) who would occasionally bring "kid lunch" to work and eat it at her desk. "Kid lunch" usually consisted of something like: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (crusts optional), a piece of fruit, and a cookie. And milk or juice. Brought in a brown paper bag, naturally.*

"Sometimes you just want a kid lunch," she'd say, and shrug.

The office we worked in was high stress -- Wall Street level high stress -- and we ate a lot of ... well, we ate a lot of crap, to be honest. We ordered in a LOT. Many chickens lost their fingers for the dining enjoyment of our office,** and local pizza places profited mightily from our long hours and inability to ever leave for lunch. (Or sometimes, dinner. There were many days when I ate breakfast, lunch, AND dinner at my desk, none of which was particularly healthy, but all of which had "easy to eat at a desk" to recommend it.)

So sometimes Annie would pack herself a kid lunch, and eat it quietly.

And on the days she did? I think everyone was envious. Because as delicious as (another) greasy slice of pizza was, there was something drool worthy about that peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It looked ... refreshing. It was the food equivalent of jumping into a swimming pool on a hot summer day. (It also didn't look like it would sit like lead in one's stomach, which I noticed that the pizzas were doing with increasing frequency.)

She called it a kid lunch because it made her think of the lunches her mom would pack when she was in school. I call it a kid lunch because it makes me think of the time in our lives when there was often more care and concern put into what we ate. When we ate things without counting the calories, without necessarily focusing on the convenience, but because they were good for us. When tasty and healthy and worth putting in our bodies trumped fast, cheap, and low fat or fat free.

I think that talking about kid lunches actually dates me a bit because, to be perfectly honest, I don't think kids eat lunch like this anymore. I think that more often than not, they eat the way the adults in their lives eat, and the adults in their lives? Eat the way the people in my office ate.

I don't know when the tide really started to turn. I don't know when or why people started paying more attention to what they put on their bodies than they do to what they're putting IN their bodies.  I don't know when "this meal will help me to extend my workday" became more important than "this meal will help me extend my LIFE" but it seems to me -- and, I think, to everyone who ever looked on in envy while Annie happily ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich -- that it's something that we should all consider.

Ask yourself: what sounds better? Another value meal of prepacked, premade, reheated food purchased at another national chain? Or a sandwhich you made fresh, with ingredients that you selected and stored for yourself, eaten with some fruit (or a cookie) and a drink that is actually good for you? How long does it take to make a sandwich? Don't you think you're worth it? ***

Give it a try. Today. Or tomorrow. And maybe you'll be able to change how you think about the food that you eat. Maybe you'll be inspired to make better, different choices in other parts of your life. Maybe you'll realize that there should be more than fast, easy, quick -- maybe you'll think that you deserve more than convenient and timesaving.

I don't know. But I think it's worth a try. One sandwich at a time.

*I actually can't remember if she had brown paper bags. But it seems like she should have had them.

**I know chickens don't actually have fingers, but that sentence continues to make me giggle.

***FYI: You are totally worth it.