Food

50 Healthy Lunch Ideas to Spice Up Your Lunch Hour

When you just can't have another PB&J.
mango black bean salad salad healthy lunch recipes
Monique Volz via Ambitious Kitchen

Another thing that's always helpful to have in mind with bringing easy, healthy lunch ideas to life is that you shouldn't fear making substitutions or tweaking recipes to suit you—including your taste preferences, budget, time constraints, dietary needs, and access to certain ingredients. “I think of recipes as a guide or inspiration,” Cara Harbstreet, M.S., R.D., L.D., of Street Smart Nutrition, tells SELF. “There are many ways to adjust recipes that still preserve the essence of the dish.” For instance, you might switch out quinoa for wild rice, turn the components of a salad into a sandwich, or choose a different variety of veggie that's in season where you live.

With those basics in mind, if you're looking for some inspiration to help you figure out what will hit the spot midday, check out these 50 easy lunch recipes for same new and delicious healthy lunch ideas.

A note about the word healthy here: We know that healthy is a complicated concept. Not only can it mean different things to different people, but it’s a word that’s pretty loaded (and sometimes fraught), thanks to the diet industry’s influence on the way we think about food. At SELF, when we talk about food being healthy, sure, we're talking about foods that are nutritious, filling, and satisfying. But we're also talking about foods that help you connect with your culture, promote joy, and simply taste delicious. Some of those foods might fall into conventional ideas of what “healthy” is. And some might not. We selected these recipes with all of that in mind while also trying to appeal to a wide variety of nutritional needs and taste buds.