What's For Lunch?

[hammerpcp]

God damn that common sense......

Article in the Globe and Mail

Hard at work in Nova Scotia? Let's do lunch

Government encourages its public servants to go out for a full hour, hoping to feed productivity, SHAWNA RICHER writes

SHAWNA RICHER

HALIFAX -- Getting in touch with employees of the Nova Scotia government might be difficult these days if you're trying to catch them over the lunch hour. There's an excellent chance they won't be at their desks.

Unlike most North Americans -- a recent U.S. study suggests 75 per cent of workers eat at their desks at least three times a week -- public servants are trying to take an hour lunch break out of the office most days. It sounds rebellious in this workaholic age, but they are just following orders. And employers in other provinces and outside Canada are taking notice.

Borrowing from a similar project started at the University of Toronto several years ago, the N.S. government wants its 10,000 employees to leave their desks at lunch -- to eat, exercise, run errands, even power nap -- in hopes of making people more productive in the afternoons. To drive the point home, the N.S. Public Service Commission sent out postcards proclaiming, "Take back the lunch break" with orders to "relax, refocus, refresh, re-energize."

The project, which cost about $5,000, is part of a healthy-workplace campaign based not on scientific data but rather employee surveys and a good amount of common sense.

"We all know from our private lives that when you have a chance to take a regular break while you're working it helps make you more alert and productive," said Human Resources Minister Ernie Fage.

"We've taken a pro-active approach to promote not just good nutrition but being more active. It's important to take that time, get that break and clear your head. Everyone benefits."

Lunch as a meal has long been fodder for big thoughts.

"Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch," said the husky Hollywood icon Orson Welles. "Lunch is for wimps," Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko barked in the 1987 film Wall Street. And former U.S. president Ronald Reagan quipped, "I never drink coffee at lunch. I find it keeps me awake for the afternoon."

The "three-martini lunch" gained popularity in the seventies as a way of gentlemen doing business. The concept was famously condemned by Jimmy Carter during the 1976 U.S. presidential campaign on the basis that inequitable tax laws allowed boozy lunches to be written off as a business expense. In response, his opponent Gerald Ford called the practice "the epitome of American efficiency."

Only the relaxation part of such a lunch-hour activity was what Myra Lefkowitz had in mind several years ago when she thought to reclaim the lunch break at the University of Toronto.

"Even though the Employment Standards Act provides everyone with the right to take lunch nobody really does it," said the university's manager of health and well-being services.

"We wanted [the campaign] to speak to the institution, management and employees. It wasn't something over which individuals would have to fight or feel guilty or deal with the critical gaze of their colleagues as they went and did something we used to all do.

"We know that in the long run, if people don't pace themselves they run into things like burnout and stress leave -- the results of people not paying attention to themselves and their needs during the day."

Michelle Lucas has worked in communications for the N.S. government since 2001, currently for the Department of Human Resources. Like many of her colleagues, she habitually worked through lunch, grabbing something at her desk, hoping for a tasty sandwich tray at meetings or forgetting to eat at all.

"I rarely took a lunch break," she said. "I can think of days where I was driving home and I realized I hadn't eaten and I was just famished.

"So many people go steady through the day and don't take breaks for themselves. We see it all the time. It's just what you do. But it's not good. A nutrition or activity break or even running errands makes you feel less stressed in the afternoon."

Several studies have suggested that a simple 10-minute walk at lunch can provide a two-hour burst of energy through the afternoon.

Nova Scotia has already heard from other provinces interested in adopting the quirky campaign. Officials in Texas and London, England, have also made inquiries.

Since the program was quietly announced in the spring, Mr. Fage, never "a lunch guy," makes an effort to stop for a healthy meal or a brisk walk in downtown Halifax. He hopes to see the idea catch on with private companies.

Leslie Beck, Globe columnist and nutritionist, said lunch is as important to health as breakfast. She lamented a corporate culture that has ruined workers' sense of entitlement to a midday respite.

"People feel guilty for taking lunch," she said. "I talk to so many people for whom it's not part of their office culture. If their boss doesn't do it, they won't either. There's a real guilt thing going on.

"But it's been four hours or maybe five since breakfast. Your blood sugar is low. People who don't eat lunch get far too hungry and eat more later."

Nova Scotia isn't measuring the results of the program. There is no lunch-break attendance taken, though Ms. Lucas chuckled that at the beginning, some employees e-mailed Human Resources to inform they had indeed gone for lunch.

"We're not being prescriptive," she said. "No one is telling anyone else what to do. It's an awareness campaign. But it brings something out in the open that we all used to do and have gotten away from. Hopefully it will go a long way to bringing back healthy habits."

[emtnerd]

Lunch break? What is that? Some days the most we get for a break is the few minutes it takes to get from one call to another.

[windsong]

Maybe those so-called Government employees should spend some quality time with EMS workers to get an idea that lunch is never what it seems.

[hammerpcp]

Maybe those so-called Government employees should spend some quality time with EMS workers to get an idea that lunch is never what it seems.

What does that mean?

[evjm]

hmmm.....

I wonder if he'll let us leave our ambulances for an hour?

[medic_ruth]

My lunch was an ice water and a stale cookie that i relocated from the ER break-room

[8151]

Pot pie with a light dill tartar sauce. I also enjoy a good hearty bowl of Campbells clam chowder in a white wine sauce. Scrumptious! :toothy7: