Food Fridays is coming to a close. During our 6 week run this year, we decided to take up a cause: Lunch. We challenged our listeners to bring their lunch from home for one full week. We called it Hack Your Lunch, and tried to change people’s lunch habits...forever.

In 2013, VISA conducted a survey about the way Americans eat lunch out. Men outspent women by 44%, and people in the Northeast spent 14% more per meal than the rest of the country. If you ate lunch out at the national average, twice a week, you would spend an average of $936 a year. But when I went out and interviewed people in line for lunch, last week, I found several people who eat lunch out every day, spending between $50 and $70 a week. $50 spent on lunch a week comes out to $2,600 a year. 

I spoke to Sam Sifton, the food editor at the New York Times. He’s been on the show to talk about BBQ, tacos, and other delicious summer foods you can cook at home. So when I sat down with him and asked how he deals with lunch on a day to day basis, his answer surprised me.

"I don’t bring a lunch to work. There are a few reasons for that, none of them good," said Sifton. "There is surprisingly little in and around Time Square. So I spend a lot of post lunch hours at The New York Times filled with regret and self-loathing." 

I asked him if he thought he could change this habit, and what it would take for him to start bringing his lunch from home.

"I would need a couple of months, maybe a year to figure out why it is that I’m preparing a good, healthy, delicious lunch for both of my children and then, once again, convincing myself that the dollar pizza or the Bonchon chicken or the nasty little falafel shop...is going to deliver unto me a good lunch. It doesn’t, it never does," he said.

I needed to find out how people who did bring their lunches to work on a daily basis pulled it off. I heard about a group of co-workers in the Bronx who brought their lunches every day. Five days a week they supply each other packed, healthy lunches. And they’ve kept it up, for an entire year. Each member brings five lunch portions, one day a week, and during the rest of the week, receives homemade meals. You can read more about them here. 

We heard from so many of you on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Has this challenge helped you at all? Are you still bringing lunch from home, or back to that ten dollar chicken sandwich? Email us at foodfridays@wnyc.org. We’d love to hear what you think.