Lunch at work when you only want half

A small tub from home beats a meal deal you'll leave half of. The trick is having something ready on busy mornings.

Eating · By the Appetite Journal team · 1 min read · Saturday 12 September 2026

Supermarket meal deals are sized for a full appetite: a sandwich, a snack and a drink. If you only want half of that, you end up throwing food away or eating past the point you wanted to stop.

Bring a small tub

A 500 ml tub holds a sensible lunch for a smaller appetite. Leftover stew, a pasta salad or a couple of boiled eggs with some salad all fit. Tubs with a clip-on lid survive a bag better than ones with a push-on lid.

If you freeze single portions at the weekend, you can take one out in the morning and it'll have defrosted by lunch in the office fridge.

A drawer at work

Keep a few things in your desk drawer for the days you forget: oatcakes, a tin of tuna with a ring-pull, a small jar of peanut butter. They keep for months and stop you heading to the shop out of habit.

If you do buy lunch, a sandwich on its own or a pot of soup is often closer to what you want than the full deal.