These recipes make it easy to enjoy a quick and healthy lunch. From salads and grain bowls to wraps and sandwiches, these midday meals only take 10 minutes or less to prep, making them perfect to pack on busy days. And with complex carbs like legumes and whole grains alongside low counts of saturated fat and sodium, these lunches are ideal for a diabetes-friendly eating pattern. Recipes like our Chicken Avocado BLT Wrap and Quinoa Deli Salad are delicious choices for any day of the week.
Who doesn’t love a BLT? In this Mexican-inspired version, we’ve added chicken and avocado and wrapped it in a tortilla, making it easy to eat.
This healthy version of a deli salad combines hearty quinoa and chickpeas with small amounts of ham and mozzarella, so you get all of the flavor without overdoing it on the sodium. This healthy quinoa salad is great as dinner and doubles as a delicious lunch the next day.
In this healthy chicken sandwich recipe, the avocado is mashed to create a healthy creamy spread.
Prep four days’ worth of high-protein vegan lunches using just four easy ingredients from your local specialty grocery store, including a veggie-heavy salad mix as a base. Because this salad mix is hearty, you can dress these bowls up to 24 hours before serving to allow the flavors in this healthy chopped salad to marry. If you can’t find a hearty mix, go with broccoli slaw or shredded Brussels sprouts.
In about 10 minutes, you can prep a week’s worth of lunches using 4 simple ingredients from your local specialty grocery store. To minimize prep, we’re taking advantage of prechopped fresh veggie mix and frozen quinoa (which heats in the microwave in under 5 minutes). These crunchy chopped salad bowls are high in fiber but lower in calories, making them perfect for those following a reduced-calorie diet.
When you boil eggs ahead of time, it’s easy to create a lickety-split and delightful lunchtime egg salad. And using the flavorful leafy carrot tops in it is like getting herbs for free.
This easy salad is great for using up any small amounts of leftover canned foods and produce you have on hand.
This mile-high vegetable and hummus sandwich makes the perfect heart-healthy vegetarian lunch to go. Mix it up with different flavors of hummus and different types of vegetables depending on your mood.
A tangy, nutty tahini dressing brings together no-cook ingredients like canned chickpeas and roasted red peppers for these easy meal-prep lettuce wraps. Make these wraps ahead of time for a grab-and-go lunch or dinner. A few wedges of warm pita finish off the meal perfectly.
This salad with lentils, feta and apple is a satisfying vegetarian entree to whip together for lunch. To save time, swap in drained canned lentils–just make sure to look for low-sodium and give them a rinse before adding them to the salad.
This quick lunch recipe is loaded with heart-healthy omega-3s thanks to the canned sockeye salmon. If you’re bringing this sandwich for lunch, keep the salmon salad separate and stuff the pita just before eating.
This power salad will keep you fueled for hours, thanks to 26 grams of protein and 8 grams of fiber. Tossing the dressing and kale, and then letting it stand in the jar, softens it enough so you don’t need to massage or cook it to make it tender.
