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The classic lunch break isn’t what it used to be with a shift in office culture, cafe closures and price increases eating into the precious midday break.

Would you call fried chicken and fries at 10 a.m. “lunch”?

“I try to keep as regular a schedule as possible, but it will translate a little strangely when I’m working shifts,” says journalist Finn Blackwell, who can often be found in the RNZ break room long before lunchtime, feasting on anything from a pastry to chicken and fries.

“I can have an early lunch at 10 a.m., or I can have a late lunch at 6 p.m., and that can get some strange looks.”

Today on The detailwe look at how lunch culture has changed and why a good lunch is less about what you eat and when you eat it and more about how you eat it.

Sophie Gray, a chef and food writer who runs a website called Destitute Gourmet, which is dedicated to helping people eat well on a budget, says much of the importance of a lunch break lies in the break — but for many, it has become more difficult.

“It’s really important in terms of company culture,” she says.

“I think over the last few years, as working from home or hybrid working has become the norm, it has been much more difficult for workplaces to create workplace culture and interaction… taking a break is really important.”

Gray encourages people who work in an office with a break room to use it.

“There are interactions that happen, conversations that happen around that space that aren’t necessarily about work, but about your life,” she says.

“There’s a sense that we’re engaging with people about what they brought for lunch…people are engaging around food in a way that they just don’t do for lunch. other things.”

But lunch at the office has become the norm for many. Jesse Mulligan, who hosts the RNZ show Afternoon show, eating at his desk, sandwich in one hand, editing audio in the other.

This doesn’t reflect how he feels about the meal, however: he keeps a salt shaker and a bottle of chili oil on his desk, just in case he has a bland lunch that needs help.

“I’m obsessed with breakfast. As soon as I get to work in the morning, all I do is think about lunch and watch the clock to decide when I can eat it, and I don’t know if that’s normal or not . but I asked my colleagues the other day: “Is it normal that at the end of my lunch, at the last bite, I feel a little sad that the day is over?”, he said. .

Mulligan also has guidelines on the appropriate time to eat lunch.

“I don’t think you can eat lunch before 11:45, but every time that big hand starts getting near the top of the clock, I think you’re there,” he says.

“But it feels like a personal failure if I can’t make it until noon.”

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