Healthier meal deal choices, picked by a nurse

Build a meal deal around fibre and let the drink be water. Choose a main made with wholemeal bread, beans, lentils or wholewheat pasta, a snack of fruit, unsalted nuts or plain popcorn, and water, milk, tea or coffee. Then check salt on the main: over 1.8g in a pack that weighs more than 100g is red.

That works in any UK supermarket with a chiller by the door, and it doesn’t depend on which products are on the shelf this month.

Why not pick the lowest calorie meal deal?

Because calories tell you how much energy is in the bag, not whether lunch will keep you going. Most rankings online sort meal deals by calories and protein. I sort them by fibre and salt, and the reason is personal.

On the wards I worked thirteen hour shifts. I was meant to get two half hour breaks and often got neither, and I have been called back from a break with my cutlery still in my hand. When I did eat, it was often a sad sandwich with one slice of cheese in it. Calories were never that sandwich’s problem. What it lacked was anything with fibre in it.

Protein is the other number people chase, and most of us don’t need to. The British Nutrition Foundation’s view is that in the UK, on average, we already eat more than enough protein, and don’t need extra from products with added protein. Fibre is a different story. Adults are advised to eat 30g a day and most average about 20g, so lunch is a good place to find some of the difference.

Which main should I choose?

Pick the one with the most fibre and a sensible amount of salt. In practice that usually means:

• a sandwich or wrap on wholemeal or seeded bread, with vegetables, beans or hummus in the filling
• a pasta pot made with wholewheat pasta
• a salad bowl with lentils, chickpeas or beans in it rather than leaves and a dressing

Turn it over. Fibre is often printed per pack and per 100g. The 3g and 6g per 100g lines that a manufacturer has to meet to call something a source of fibre or high fibre make a useful yardstick, even when the pack makes no claim.

Then salt. Look at the weight on the front: when a portion is over 100g, the front of pack scheme turns salt red above 1.8g in that portion. Per 100g, more than 1.5g is high. For scale, adults are advised to have no more than 6g of salt in a whole day, and around three quarters of what we eat is already in packaged and everyday foods. Two red salt mains in one day is more than half your allowance gone before dinner.

What’s the best meal deal snack?

Fruit, unsalted nuts or plain popcorn, if your supermarket includes them. The NHS list of healthier snacks is fresh or tinned fruit in juice rather than syrup, unsalted mixed nuts, plain popcorn, rice cakes, crackers with lower fat cheese and lower sugar yoghurts. A fruit pot or a bag of carrot sticks also adds a plant to your lunch that the sandwich may not have.

Cereal bars are the one I would look at twice. Despite their healthy image, many are high in sugar and fat, so read the sugars per 100g: over 22.5g is red. Crisps are mostly a salt question, so the same 1.5g per 100g line applies.

What should I drink with a meal deal?

Water, lower fat milk, tea or coffee. All of them count towards the 6 to 8 cups or glasses of fluid a day the government recommends, and none of them adds free sugars unless you put it there.

The fizzy drink is where a meal deal goes sideways. A regular can of cola has 35g of sugar, which is more than the 30g of free sugars an adult is advised to have in a whole day. On a front of pack label a drink is red for sugars above 11.25g per 100ml, and for a bottle bigger than 150ml there is a per portion red line too, at 13.5g.

Juice and smoothies feel like the virtuous choice. A smoothie only ever counts as one of your 5 A Day however much you drink, and juice and smoothies together should be kept to 150ml a day, drunk with a meal. Check the bottle size. Sugar free drinks have to say with sweetener next to their name, and they are a better swap than a full sugar can, though water is still the plainer answer.

How do I put it all together?

A meal deal built this way can carry three or four plants: the wheat in wholemeal bread, the vegetables in the filling, the chickpeas in the hummus, the fruit in the pot. If you are counting towards thirty a week, that adds up over a working week.

What if I’m eating it on a night shift?

Then timing matters as much as choice. Dietitians advise shift workers to have the main meal earlier, before a shift starts rather than during the night, and lighter food in the small hours. A sandwich and a pot of pasta fit the start of a night better than 3am. What to eat on a night shift covers the hours one by one, and hospital vending machine choices is for the nights when the shop is shut.

I work a set rota now, with no nights. I prep my food and take every break. Not everyone can, and a meal deal is often the realistic option. It can still be a good one.

If the meal deal itself is fine but you are flat by mid afternoon, why you crash after lunch looks at what is behind that. And if you would like to test how fast you can read the back of a sandwich pack, try the label test.