i have been buying lunch for the last month and it has taken a huge chunk from my wage so i will start taking lunch from now on.

What do you do can anyone give me tips?

Also what is healthier?

thoughs

There isn't too much advice to give here.

I normally buy lunch because it's more convenient for me.

As for the healthy options...you can make a nice, healthy lunch and bring it in, or find somewhere with healthy foods near you and buy something there.

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showt...0#post64210680

I try and take my lunch in but sometimes I'm too lazy to make anything. My favourite is pesto pasta, spinach, cherry tomatoes and mozarella but a lot of the time I end up with crackers and laughing cow.

is it better to make your own so you know what has been put it?

I guess you can trust what you've put into your own sandwich, for instance.

I take my own. I spend about £10 a week on food for my lunches. I get some nice bread, make up some salads, get some chicken drumsticks or ham or make a quiche.

Much cheaper and healthier and I find I don't have that 3pm energy slump or feel starving again within an hour like I do if I buy lunch.

Cheese sandwich, bottle of water. Works for me.

I take mine in. I often make a little extra for dinner and box it up for lunch or make sandwiches, wraps and salads. I always have home made soup frozen in portions and I like that in winter when it's cold. Check out DS' Elanor's amazing lunchboxes for inspiration.

Can you heat your lunch at work? If you can then batch cook, make some stew, a good hearty soup, a curry etc. Divide into tubs and chuck in the freezer. Grab one on your way out in the morning and there you go. I take lunch in every day as I prefer it and there's nowhere close to my work to buy something decent. Often I will cook double portions of dinner and box up some for lunch another day.

This is Elanors Lunch Box site - click on the picture and you can see what is in the box.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ginger_...7601368797142/

When i used to work full time it was home made sarnies Mon - Thurs and chippy on Friday. I never bought sarnies, normally meat from the butchers and buns from the bakers. Better quality than the sarnies from the shops and worked out much cheaper as well.

I prefer to buy lunch in that I have tins of things like soup or sausages and beans and heat them up in the staff room microwave, and those sort of things keep me filled up for the rest of the afternoon!

I always take lunch, used to be sarnies now it's some fruit and homemade bread and soup

Total cost is roughly £5 a week

I take lunch in four days a week and then buy something as a Friday treat.

Last night's warm-ups is usually my lunch.

I just bring it along with some properly made salad, with a good dressing.

As others have said home made sandwiches are always a good bet that way you can make them exactly as you like them. I'm not a fan of salad so shop bought is always limited for me since the majority of them contain mostly salad. Plus you can choose your range of bread or rolls or whatever to suit and it is usually cheaper to get them either from the supermarket or from a bakers direct.

Same with your fillings you can be as creative as you like or as healthy/unhealthy as you want them to be making your own gives you a lot more scope to work with.

Again if you have facilties for heating food as people have said either make a bit more the night before and take it in the next day or batch cook. I used to take in soups in the winter (either home made or tinned as I'm a sucker for Heinz tomato that is my tinned soup weakness).

Even things like home made, pasta, cous cous or rice salads could be an option, again just put in what you fancy your own mix of herbs, spices whatever and your sorted.

I would occasionally buy lunch out as a treat but preferred to take my own as it was a lot cheaper and to be honest I didn't want to waste half my lunch break queuing in one of the takeaways to rush back to then try and gulp it down quickly before going back to work. Plus the fact that my old office was full of boys who did go out pig out on the nearby takeaways was also an offputting factor. My main treats were for birthday/leaving lunches etc when something was organised and we went out as a group for lunch.

I know one was spending about £30 a week on their takeaway lunches and that was before buying any additional things like drinks etc so a large chunk of money to lose for no real reason.