The benefits of bringing your lunch to work far outweigh the taste of your favorite sandwich from that little gourmet (and expensive) lunch spot. Brown bagging your lunch not only helps you save money (a lot of money actually), it can help you shed a few pounds too. And just when you thought the incentives for bringing your lunch couldn’t get any better, lunch boxing it also helps you to do more than your fair share to help our environment. 

Fatten Your Wallet

• In most U.S cities, the average cost when you buy your lunch out is at least $6. Add in tax and the cost of a drink, and you are looking at roughly $8 dollars for lunch. If you buy lunch every day, you are spending $40 bucks a week, and letting all that fresh food sitting in your refrigerator at home go to waste. Even brown bagging your lunch three days a week can save you a nice chunk of change — roughly $1,000 dollars a year. If you were to bring lunch all five days of the week, 50 weeks a year, you are looking at a savings of $2,000. I can think of much better things to buy with $2,000 than sandwiches.

Shrink Your Waistline

• There are also non-monetary benefits to bringing your lunch to work — like weight loss. Brown bagging your lunch helps you stay accountable to yourself, letting you be in charge of WHAT and HOW much food goes into your body. Bringing your lunch to work will help you consume fewer calories than your co-workers who just ordered those greasy burgers and fries. Eating your own brown bag lunch instead of fast food that is calorie and sodium-laden helps you to avoid that afternoon crash. You wind up consuming fewer calories again, because no afternoon crash eliminates that trip to the candy machine for an afternoon pick-me-up.

Help the Environment

• According to the Environmental Protection Agency, each year the U.S. consumes over 380 billion plastic bags, sacks and wraps. Decrease your negative impact on our environment simply by bringing your lunch to work. There is no doubt that homemade packed lunches produce less waste than a take-out lunch. When you bring your lunch to work in reusable containers in reusable bags, you are saying "no thanks" to the millions of useless napkins, condiments, Styrofoam, plastic containers and utensils thrown into lunch bags each day.

 Tips to make bringing your lunch to work easier:

• Make sure to cook extras for dinner so that you can bring leftovers for lunch the next day
• When you are done with dinner, pack your lunch right then and there. You won’t have time to pack your lunch in the morning
• When you go grocery shopping make sure to buy things that you ENJOY eating for lunch: breads for sandwiches, lunchmeats, soups, crackers, cheese, nuts, yogurt, fruits and vegetables. Don’t forget to pack something sweet but healthy to avoid the siren call of the vending machine
• When you just can’t cook or your just don’t have the time to pack a healthy lunch, check out Amy’s Kitchen frozen meals or Kashi frozen meals for a healthy calorie-controlled, ready-made frozen meal to heat up in the microwave at work. Or keep a jar of peanut butter in your desk drawer for a last minute sandwich
• Keep some staple condiments at work so that your lunch doesn’t get soggy from adding them the night before
• Buy yourself a cool lunch bag to pack your lunch in
• When you go out to eat, save half for a yummy lunch the next day
• Invest in some good containers to put your lunch in
• Bring in your own cutlery to cut down on plastic waste
• You don’t have to bring your lunch everyday, but aim for at least three days a week to help the environment, your waistline and your wallet