How work changed lunch

The Food Chain

BBC

Arts, Society & Culture, Food

4.7 • 545 Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How do our work habits shape what we eat?

In this programme Izzy Greenfield discovers the history of the workplace lunch and the ways in which society has reshaped it.

Historian Megan Elias of Boston University in the US explains how lunches have evolved from the factories of the 19th century Industrial Revolution to sandwiches eaten at the desk in 20th century offices.

Izzy visits an office and co-working space in Manchester, run by Department, a company that operates office spaces in the North of England. Abigail Gunning, Operations Director, explains why it makes sense for the company to open the building’s cafe and restaurant to the public as well as staff.

And how does workplace food impact our health? Olivia Beck, registered nutritionist at Food Choices at Work in Cork, Ireland, explains why it’s in employers’ interests to create a healthy food environment for all staff, whether in the office or at home.

If you’d like to contact the programme you can email thefoodchain@bbc.co.uk

Presented by Izzy Greenfield.

Produced by Beatrice Pickup.

Additional reporting by James Jackson.

(Image: a man eating a burger with a glass of juice at his desk in front of a computer screen. Credit: Getty Images/BBC)

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm no longer ravenous. I'll no longer eat until I fall asleep. The Hunger Game,
0:05.9	a new five-part series exploring the meteoric rise of weight loss drugs. It's been an incredible
0:10.7	story with these drugs. The uptake, the amount of product that's been sold, the amounts of money
0:15.1	is cost. What the drugs do, how they work, and the knock-on effects of their widespread use.
0:20.5	We'll be sitting here in three years' time going, oh, it caused problems that we're now going
0:25.3	to have to fix. The Hunger Game with me, Professor Gilesio. Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:33.9	This is the main kind of the hub of the building. So we've got big offices of 24 upwards on the right-hand side and then some more transient offices underneath the mesium.
0:43.9	Then upstairs we've got our hot desks. So we have people who come in a couple of days a weekend and some people who come in every single day.
0:51.3	What do you eat at work? Where do you eat it and who do you eat it with? This is the food chain
0:56.9	from the BBC World Service. I'm Izzy Greenfield. Today we're talking about food in the workplace. Over the
1:04.0	years, lunch has evolved from the main meal of the day to a sandwich hastily eaten at our desk. So what
1:09.5	do lunches around the world say about our work
1:12.0	culture, our health and our priorities? And how busy is this usually? This is like a standard
1:18.1	Wednesday. Head's down working hard. I'm being shown around an old brick warehouse building
1:24.5	in the centre of Manchester in the north of England. This is the original flooring and if you can see here we've got the turnstiles.
1:31.4	This building housed all the cigarettes that came into Manchester.
1:35.2	That's the bonded warehouse and you can see in the turnstiles where the train would come
1:38.6	into the side of the building and these huge turnstiles on the floor would be what turned
1:42.2	the train around.
1:43.4	Today it's an office block housing lots of different companies and people using co-working spaces.
1:49.1	I'm here to find out what they all eat for lunch.
1:52.3	This is the main member entrance and customer entrance, which is usually directly into the cafe.
	...

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