How I Lunch

My Blog

In a Nutshell

I eat the following meal daily. It boosts my energy levels and keeps me full until dinner. Preparation and cleaning combined take less than 15 minutes and it costs less than 3 CHF to make. Ingredients are non-perishable, so groceries can be purchased weekly.

Ingredient Amount
Base -
Plain Quark (Similar to Skyr or Greek yogurt) 200 grams (g)
Honey 10g
Peanut butter 20g
Nuts and Seeds -
Almonds 40g
Walnuts 40g
Brazil Nuts 2 nuts
Chia Seeds 15g
Flax Seeds 15g
Hemp Seeds 15g
Supplements -
Hard-boiled Eggs 2 eggs
80% Dark Chocolate 2 squares (20g)

920 calories, 60 g protein

Some notes:

  • Amounts are adjusted for me: a 77 kg male exercising 3-4x/week.
  • To prepare, eat the base with the nuts and seeds. Eat the supplements separately.
  • For those in Switzerland: all these ingredients are available for cheap at Migros.

The Story

Over the years, I've tried many options for preparing lunch. In general, they were slow to cook, store, transport and clean up. I've made several recent paradigm-boggling observations about food:

  1. Carbohydrates aren't necessary.
  2. Seeds, nuts and yogurt are extremely nutritious.
  3. It's possible to prepare and eat a lunch in both under 15 minutes.

And voila the above recipe. Let A be the 8 months that I have been following this recipe on a daily basis. A has been positively correlated to increased energy levels throughout the day, enough satiety to easily last until dinner and occasional funny looks in public.

Two things to note:

  1. I make up for any deficits in my lunch with my dinner, which is warm and includes veggies, fish and carbs. Future post.
  2. This diet may work wonders for you or nothing at all - our bodies/minds exhibit remarkable disparity in their sensitivity to food quality. I have a friend who lives a physically and mentally demanding life while getting >90+% of his calories from plain spaghetti!

The Theory

Protein isn't all that matters! I've chosen most of the ingredients based on sources like Huberman Lab Podcast (HLP) #42. Hopefully you'll pardon that my citations are from the same podcast - it generally cites the primary sources.

Ingredient Nutritional Benefit
Quark/Yogurt Probiotic. Gut health has been shown to improve mood. link
Seeds Omega 3. Useful for mood and lots of other stuff. [HLP #42]
Nuts L-carnitine; otherwise hard to get for those who don't eat much meat. Moderate evidence for impact on mood. link
Eggs Acetylcholine. Improves your focus. [HLP #42]
Brazil Nuts Selenium, which increases testosterone. Perks include mood and athletic ability. [HLP #42]

The effects probably aren't massive, but these compounds are present in fair quantities and are decently well-studied.

Appendix

Putting your Worries to Ease

I've heard lots of criticisms of my meal over the months. I'll try not to straw-man them:

  1. No carbohydrates? Sorry, my body can't take it!
    • Carbohydrates are a recent invention; we barely ate them for most of human history.
    • I'm of east-asian descent and ate rice as a kid. And I'm fine.
  2. I'll get tired of eating the same thing every day!
    • I'm not a monk - I've certainly gotten tired of foods before, like when I'd prepare 14-meal portions of curry and chili. Yet somehow I've never tired of this meal!
  3. It doesn't make sense to eat cold food during the winter.
    • We've been making the "you are what you eat" fallacy since times immemorial. Just how it (usually) doesn't apply for fats and cholesterol, eating cold food should actually be making your body hotter as it tries to compensate.
  4. This meal sounds disgusting!
    • You'd be surprised how good it tastes.

How to be Efficient

  1. Hard-boil 8-10 eggs at a time.
  2. Get two >750 mL containers.
    • Container A: Premix and store your seeds.
    • Container B: Premix and store the nuts.
  3. For taste/ease of transport
    • Separate wet and dry ingredients when transporting the items. The Quark is available in 200g packages; I just bring one of these and mix it with the nuts/seeds during lunch.

Substitutable ingredients

The following have worked well.

  • Oats
    • I used oats for a while to put on weight. Cheap and in high protein.
  • Cheese
    • I used Cheese for protein and additional nutrients. However it's expensive and tastes quite nasty with the Quark.
  • Blueberries
    • I used these for antioxidants and anthocyanin. Their effects include a notable decrease in DNA damage. I stopped because they're expensive and people got mad at me for fueling globalism.
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