Shall we do lunch?

[Gob]

Should lunch breaks be mandatory?

People are always being told that lunch is under threat from workaholism, but would a compulsory long break actually mean we achieved more.

Most of us rush through lunch. We might have a sandwich at our desk or grab a quick salad with a colleague. Or perhaps we skip lunch altogether. After all, breakfast is widely regarded as the most important meal of the day. Dinner is often the most enjoyable. Lunch gets short shrift.

Lunch also has suffered from the crush of technology. Email, social media, and 24-hour news all eat away at lunch. Even when we have lunch alone, we rarely spend the whole time quietly reading or thinking. We are more connected to our hand-held electronic devices than our own thoughts.

Given the fast pace of modern life, it is worth considering whether employers should require a substantial lunch break.

Or, if a mandatory lunch seems too draconian, perhaps employers could give workers incentives to take time off for lunch, just as in some countries they subsidise or reward regular visits to the gym or a physician. Would we benefit from a long intraday pause?

One obvious reason to do lunch is to slow down and gain some perspective. If we burrow into work, and don't come up for air during the day, we will have a hard time thinking strategically or putting our daily tasks into broader context.

By taking a lunch break, we can think outside the box. In the interviews I conducted for my book, I was struck by how many senior leaders stressed the importance of strategic "downtime" - lunch or some other block of an hour or more per day - to break up their thinking and spur them to be more strategic.

Where we have lunch can be almost as important as whether we have it. If we sit down at a real restaurant and take time to chat leisurely with colleagues, we are more likely to slow down than if we dash to a fast food chain. In fact, a fast food lunch can be more harmful than no lunch at all.

The dangers of fast food are deeper than caloric ingredients and unhealthy food preparation. Recent studies have shown that fast food also has pernicious effects on how we think. For example, Sanford DeVoe, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, has shown that merely being exposed to a fast food logo speeds up our already-fast snap reactions.

Urban fast food locations are packed at lunchtime. In the suburbs, the drive-thrus are lined with cars. People who eat at fast food restaurants might think, as the old McDonald's slogan suggested, that they deserve a break. However, they aren't getting one.

When people do lunch quickly, they often feel forced to choose fast food. But that kind of lunch experience doesn't slow us down. Instead, it speeds us up.

A mandatory break would be especially helpful for people who trade stocks during their lunch break. When I worked in Morgan Stanley's derivatives group in Tokyo during the 1990s, there was a mandatory halt to trading every day for 90 minutes during lunch.

I was struck by the positive impact of the break on the tempo of trading. The pause led to more rational thinking about the trading day and often helped cooler heads prevail during times of stress. We read. We contemplated strategy. Sometimes we even ate.

Today, many individuals trade too much. A mandatory break might help wean day traders off the addiction of constant trading. Unfortunately, the trend is toward more trading, not less.

Historically, stock exchanges in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Singapore recognised the benefits of a lunch break. But now the Asian markets are moving toward the Western model of continuous trading, and shortening their lunch breaks.

A long, mandatory lunch would also benefit another important group - single people. It would free up time for them to do something people don't do nearly as well during the evening - go on a date.

Dinner is a risky proposition for a date, especially a first one. It almost always lasts too long. If the date goes poorly, both people want to leave after an hour, but find it awkward to do so. And even dinner dates that go well probably should end sooner than they do. There is plenty of time for a second date.

The two factors that matter most at the early stages of a relationship are chemistry and compatibility. You can get a sense of those during an hour-long lunch, but not based on a glance. Also, there's a hard stop so both people know the date is going to end.

Although a mandatory lunch could generate substantial benefits, we are unlikely to do it on our own. When we have the choice, many of us see the salient costs of a leisurely lunch, but not the benefits.

To encourage people to enjoy the benefits of lunch, we need to change the lunch default rule with the kind of "libertarian paternalism" advocated by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their book Nudge. Just as they would impose a default rule requiring people to save money, while permitting them to "opt out," employers could do the same for lunch. People could skip lunch if they wanted, but they would have to take some action - fill out a form, or log on to a website.

"Lunch is for wimps" - Gordon Gekko, character in 1987 film Wall Street
"There's no such thing as a free lunch" - popularised by Milton Friedman, economist
"Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch" - Orson Welles, actor and director
"A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it" - Aldous Huxley, author
"I haven't trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I've never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex" - Erma Bombeck, journalist
"Office hours are from 12 to 1, with an hour off for lunch" - George S Kaufman, playwright

Economic growth was supposed to make us better off by creating more opportunities for leisure. Yet people feel they are working harder than ever. A mandatory break might help reverse this trend.

And it wouldn't necessarily create an unproductive 90-minute block. Employers could ensure someone is on staff at all times by staggering lunch periods (11:30-13:00; 1200-13:30 and 12:30-14:00), like schools do.

Finally, lunch breaks could create new opportunities for part-time work by institutionalising two half-time shifts - one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Parents with newborns might choose to work just one of those times. It might become easier and more acceptable to become a halftime employee if there were a clean, natural split between morning and afternoon.

If our leaders want to improve economic growth and productivity, they could start by experimenting with a policy tool that is simpler than fiscal spending and less risky than monetary stimulus. How about lunch?

[The Hen]

I try to take 30 minutes break in the middle of the day.

More often than not it is between 15-20 minutes. Often, non-existent.

[oldr_n_wsr]

I take/eat lunch every day, 45minutes to an hour. I eat my sandwhich and read the newspaper and/or do the crossword puzzle. My cell phone is off (yes, I finally have a cell phone) as it is most of the time anyway. If I get done with the paper or crossword puzzle I close my eyes and relax. Sometimes I read the big book if not in the mood to relax.

[Gob]

I have two lunch types. If I'm at the office I'll sit at my desk and eat while reading Private Eye or the like. If I'm out and about visiting clients, I'll drive to somewhere pleasant and eat lunch while viewing the scenery.

[Lord Jim]

I'll drive to somewhere pleasant and eat lunch while viewing the scenery.

[Long Run]

Possibly good scenery if you can stomach the food.

[rubato]

Lunch is considered a cultural treasure in France, and a major reason my lovely spouse wanted to go there. We had stopped at St Pierre and Miquelon (a French territory off the Canadian coast) and had a fantastic lunch and she was hooked on the idea.

The genuine didn't disappoint. The French have come up with a very plausible answer to the question "what do you do when you have become an affluent society?", "What do you do with that little bit more than you need that you now have?".

Déjeuner! An art form as well as a way to satisfy a need.

yrs,
rubato

[dales]

Lunch is considered a cultural treasure in France....
yrs,
rubato

So are the outdoor pissuers on Paris street corners.

[rubato]

Lunch is considered a cultural treasure in France....
yrs,
rubato

So are the outdoor pissuers on Paris street corners.

We had a great lunch every day for 2 weeks.

I saw one place where there appeared to be pee on the ground.

Maybe you should get out more?


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

We had a great lunch every day for 2 weeks.

That must have put a dent in your wife's credit card....

But what the hell, you only live once...

It's her money, she can spend it any way she wants....

[loCAtek]

Lunch is mandatory in the US for every 8 hour shift, and a half hour break if you work over 5 hours.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Lunch is considered a cultural treasure in France

So is Jerry Lewis.

'nuff said

Meade

[dales]

[Gob]

10:38AM Monday Sep 17, 2012



SYDNEY has beaten New York and Paris to place third in a survey of top holidays destinations for food lovers by British magazine Which?.

The top city for foodies was San Sebastian in Spain, followed closely by Tokyo, according to a panel of food writers and bloggers who were asked to rate 10 destinations outside Britain.

The results do not surprise the top chefs and food critics who are about to descend on Sydney for the Crave Sydney International Food Festival, starting on October 1.

Nicholas Lander, a leading British food writer, said eating in Sydney had always been wonderful. He recalled a lunch at a Berowra Waters restaurant in 1985 as one of the ''most memorable meals of my life''. His new book, The Art of the Restaurateur, includes Neil Perry in the pantheon of top restaurateurs in the world.


Mr Lander said what made Sydney's restaurants so distinctive was the views, the light, the warmth of Sydneysiders and their growing appreciation of good food, alongside their enjoyment of good wine and ''their enthusiasm for having fun''.

One of the world's most followed food bloggers, David Lebovitz, who raved about Sydney's food when he attended Crave last year, said he avoided ranking things because it was hard to quantify a city (or food, or chefs, or restaurants) in terms of numbers.

''I know folks like lists but places like Billy Kwong are special and it's hard to say it's better [or worse] than other places. It's an experience - and a rather excellent one,'' he said.

Mr Lebovitz, an American who blogs at DavidLebovitz.com and lives in Paris, said Sydney food was exciting because its chefs had an open-minded and adventurous approach, while the food in Paris often had a tendency to sameness.

''It's interesting that the new wave of coffee places in Paris are mostly owned by Australians. It's not necessarily in the French mentality to look at something and say: 'How can I/we do this better?' So there is a sameness to a lot of the food in Paris,'' he said.


http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/cuisine ... 260j7.html

[MajGenl.Meade]

At lunch mum said:

"Now I want you to eat every carrot and pea on your plate"

So I did.

She smacked me and made me wipe up the mess

[oldr_n_wsr]

A roo sandwhich on rye with swiss and munster and plenty of mayo and mustard. And make sure the roo is lean (gotta keep my girlish figure).