Having lunch at your desk again?
We are all guilty of this - having lunch at our desks while working! We are sometimes too busy, and in our quest to beat deadlines, stepping out for lunch or a snack becomes a problem.
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This is not good and I’d like to share with you an article by Health Hatfield I found online.
It’s time to change this habit for a healthy life.
Ellen Spencer admits it: She's a desk diner.
"I eat lunch at my desk three or four times a week," says Spencer, an executive assistant in Boston. "I'd like to eat away from my desk with my friends more often, or just get away from my desk for a while, but usually it's just too busy."
Sounds like anyone you know? Some 70 per cent of Americans eat at their desks several times a week, according to the American Dietetic Association and ConAgra Foods Foundation.
The bad news is that this can lead not only to poor nutritional choices, but to food-safety problems as well.
"The desk was not designed to be an eating place," says Rick Hall, a faculty member at Arizona State University in Phoenix. "So spending your lunch hour in front of your computer brings with it a number of issues."
Here are some reasons not to eat while you work.
Drawbacks of desk dining
One of the biggest drawbacks to eating at your desk is that you're not focused on your food. Instead, you're sending e-mail, answering the phone, shuffling paper - the perfect recipe for overeating.
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"Eating at your desk encourages mindless eating and overeating," says Susan Moores, a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. "You're most likely multitasking and not paying attention to the amount of food you're eating."
Lunching at your desk also means that instead of sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day, you're doing it for nine.
"Eating at your desk also prevents you from getting up and out of your office," says Moores. "You need to get the heart pumping and the blood flowing again, and lunch is an important time to do that. If you're sitting at your desk eating, you lose that opportunity."
As if that weren't bad enough, dining at your desk can create a field day for bacteria.
"If you get called away from your desk, and you have to put off eating for an hour or two, and then you pick at your lunch over the day, you need to be concerned about the temperature of your food and food safety," says Moores.
In other words, your room-temperature chicken salad sandwich that's been sitting out for three hours can easily become a bacteria feeding ground. But wait, it gets worse.
"The desk, in terms of bacteria, is 400 times dirtier than your toilet," says Charles Gerba, a professor of environmental microbiology at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "People turn their desks into bacteria cafeterias because they eat at their desk, but they never clean them. The phone is the dirtiest, the desktop is next, and the mouse and the computer follow."
To give your desktop the dirt test, Gerba says, "turn your keyboard over and see how many crumbs fall out. The more of a snowstorm, the dirtier your desk."
So there you have it. Move away from your desk and prevent the overeating and bacteria infested lunch. Eat to live!