Ham and cheese, tuna, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chocolate chip cookies, apples, peaches, sliced carrots, raisins…what a wonderful or sometimes disappointing assemblage of food is hidden in school lunchboxes. I believe I spent my entire elementary school years imagining what was in my lunchbox, waiting for the lunch bell, eating lunch, chattering away with friends and then carrying the empty lunchbox home wishing it was full of food again.

Remember grammar school when kids all sat at big tables and ate lunch and talked? When did we stop doing that?

Lunch is just fun and yet it’s one of the first things I gave up when I became an adult. Then it became all about dinner. Dinner was glamorous. High heels, cocktails, and atmosphere. Lunch was nothing special…until I began working in advertising. An ad agency is an awful lot like elementary school. Boys pull your braids (metaphorically speaking), they boast, they yell and run around (literally) – and the girls huddle together and take meetings and talk about the boys. And just like grammar school, our days were centered on lunch. The first thing we all discussed when we rolled into the office was what we should have for lunch. Should we order Greek food? Italian? Brazilian? We had exotic tastes. All of us worked through lunch, and every creative meeting was taken during lunch and there was something about eating and brainstorming ideas that just worked. Maybe being creative makes you hungry. Or maybe, the act of eating and sharing food breaks down barriers between people and assists in cooperative efforts. Who knows? I can just report from experience that food and good ideas go together. Personally, I am creatively inspired by Chinese food. Every brilliant idea I ever came up with involved Chinese food. The secret to my success.

How do most of us have lunch? At the office, lunches are taken with co-workers, or they are working lunches. Sometimes stay-at-home moms get to have lunch with other mothers, but just as many have a sandwich standing in the kitchen. Fast food lunches are eaten in cars. Many people eat lunch alone.

I think we should take a stand here. Let’s bring back lunch. Let’s take our lunch breaks and eat slowly, enjoy our food and share our thoughts with one another. Let’s not revive power lunches, though. So 80s. These will be empowerment lunches. Very 09.

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