Yeah, packing a lunch takes time and that little brown bag takes some of us back to the teasing and taunting we were subjected to in the school cafeteria, but it really is a lot better for the environment. 

Firstly, I don't actually recommend using those little brown bags because of the emotional trauma that might be associated with them, but mostly because they are wasteful, and disposable.  Get a reusable lunch bag instead or better yet reuse any old bag from home or even a plastic shopping bag.  Then pick out your tasty lunch morsels and pack them in reusable containers.  The major environmental impact of packing your own lunch lays in reducing the amount of dispoable packaging we consume.  So if you're using dispoable ziploc bags, plastic cutlery and over-packaged 'lunch-kits' and packing the whole in a disposable lunch bag, you've missed a major part of the point. 

Another environmental benifit of packing your own lunch is that you're eating ingredients that you've selected with the environment in mind.  I'm talkin' organic foods, locally grown and produced foods, fair-trade foods.  If you make an effort to buy these foods when grocery shopping, why not go all the way and extend your green choices into your life away from home. 

If the environmental benifits aren't enough for you to change your lunching ways, think of your health.  Come on, we've all seen 'Supersize Me' and 'Fast-food Nation', we know how horrible these foods are for the human machine.  Ever wonder why, come 3 o'clock, you feel low-energy and brain-dead?  You may look no further than your diet!  We don't even know what exactly are in these fast-food burger 'meats' and processed chicken slabs.  Yet we scarf 'em down anyway and wonder 'why can't I ever lose weight'? 

So let's take stock of what we're ingesting.  We'll reduce our environmental impact, we'll all be healthy, sexy beasts and we'll all be a little richer in mind, body, soul and bank account.