The Pot Noodle Rap

A report landed on my desk a few days ago with some statistics you should pull out your chair and sit down for: 54% of workers in the Merseyside area aren’t eating healthy food during their lunch break, and a whole bunch more are spending three or more lunch breaks at their desks, per week. The message to employers is loud and clear: give us more breaks, and we’ll be more productive. The message to me was much more habitual: your dietary particulars at work are shit.

I’m one of those people who find the task of being creative about more than one meal a day, a weekly, arduous and circular pain in the arse. It always starts the same. Monday, pick up milk from corner store (‘would you like a bag with that sir’, ‘yes’, ‘would you like a receipt’, ‘yes, just like last week’), push into office, dump milk in fridge. Come lunch time, I’m shuffling around Tesco with my blue basket, drifting from the veg isle into dairy, from meat into cleaning products. At every point the pretense is amusing only to myself – what should I get this week. The question mark is no longer a part of the mission.

Breakfast is easy and a comfort. Cereal. And it’s a standard all food should try and live up to: retrieve from cupboard, open, pour, fetch spoon, done. Cereal gets away with it because there’s a possibility it will be good for you. But four hours later, what are the equivalent options? I know soup won't fill me up and with that I turn to Pot Noodles. The ad tells us to put the pan down, but what it doesn't mention is how disgusting the result is. I once bought three Pot Noodles during a Tesco visit and felt victorious – three lunchtimes were struck down and accounted for in one fell swoop. It was halfway through the third step of the Pot Noodle experience I realised my mistake. Powdered veg should never fizz up like this. But, like a grim-faced dinner lady banging out trays of turkey twizzlers to blameless children, I pressed on with step 3. The curry sauce. It had the gelatine composition of fig jam and an appearance of a heavy smoker's phlegm.

I keep the remaining untouched Pot Noodles high up in the cupboard. A visual homage to the dangers of 3-step food after 10am. I'll never willfully put Pot Noodle in my mouth again, thus I can waste less time fussing over my work diet shortcomings and spend more time chewing over what the hell I’m supposed to eat for dinner.