Today's Edition
SADEQ ALKHOORI (ABU DHABI)
Between 1pm and 3pm in Abu Dhabi's office districts, lunch is often decided quickly. Some workers open delivery apps. Some reheat food from home. Others go for whatever feels fast, filling and easy enough to carry them through the rest of the day.
In that narrow part of the afternoon, the UAE's healthy nutrition agenda meets one of its most ordinary settings: the office lunch break.
That shift is no longer only abstract. In March, the UAE Cabinet approved the National Healthy Nutrition Strategy 2031 as part of a wider effort to promote healthier lifestyles, strengthen preventive health and improve the country's food environment.
The strategy includes 16 initiatives, from encouraging healthier alternatives and raising awareness to regulating the marketing of unhealthy food and beverages, developing a digital nutrition guide and building a national nutrition monitoring system.
The health case behind that push is already visible in official data. The Ministry of Health and Prevention's National Health and Nutrition Survey found that 22.4% of adults in the UAE are living with obesity, 59.1% do not get enough physical activity, 54.2% have high cholesterol, and 96.2% exceed recommended sodium limits.
Those numbers help explain why the workday meal matters. Lunch may be routine, but routine is often where health habits settle in most deeply.
At the workplace level, Abu Dhabi Public Health Centre's SEHHI in Workplace programme encourages employers to support healthier food environments through cafeterias, vending machines, workplace events and staff awareness efforts. In practice, that means healthier nutrition is increasingly being carried into the spaces where many people spend most of their day.
But lunch at work is rarely shaped by health alone. Time, cost, habit and the simple need to avoid one more decision all play their part.
Convenience vs Healthier Intention
For Fadhel Barakat, the answer is to avoid the daily ordering cycle altogether. He said he usually brings lunch from home and heats it up at work, partly to save money and partly to avoid spending extra time deciding what to order.
"I usually bring lunch from home and heat it up at work," he told Aletihad. "It costs less, saves time, and I do not have to think about what to order or wait for delivery."
His choice points to one practical side of healthier eating at work. For some employees, bringing food from home offers control, predictability and a way around a food environment that does not always feel varied or dependable enough.
Mohammed Al Hossani described a different rhythm. For him, the lunch decision starts with time. If he has enough of it, he prefers to step out and eat properly. If not, the choice becomes whatever is easiest to manage.
"If I have time, I'd rather go out and have a nice meal," he told Aletihad. "But if I don't, then it becomes whatever is fastest or easiest at the office. When you're already tired from work, you don't want to overthink what to eat, place an order, wait for it, then go and pick it up."
He said healthier food available directly at the office would make "a huge difference", which speaks to a different part of the same issue. Many workers are not simply forgoing healthier meals. They are often too busy to expend extra effort on arranging meals.
Others described similar pressures from different angles. Fatima Mohamed said lunch during the workday is often shaped by speed and routine, with convenience tending to overtake health considerations once the day becomes busy.
Najla AbdulKareem said she tries to make lighter choices, but that healthier meals can still feel harder to sustain when they are more expensive or less filling than easier alternatives.
