The Lunch Box Diet: Eat all day, lose weight, feel great. Lose up to a stone in 4 weeks.. Simon Lovell

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      Rhubarb

      Rhubarb’s tart flavour makes it a great addition to your lunch box; however, the traditional method of cooking rhubarb with tons of sugar needs to be modified. Rhubarb offers fibre, potassium and calcium and 100 grams of rhubarb (without sugar) is only 7 calories!

      Selection: Rhubarb should be crisp and glossy. The colour can range from pale green or pink all the way to a deep red colour and doesn’t matter when you’re making a selection. The most tender stalks will be less than 3cm thick. Remove any traces of leaves as they contain a corrosive toxin called oxalic acid.

      Preparation: Rhubarb is too tart to eat alone but it need not be drenched in sugar. Use sweet berries or sweet cider vinegar in the water when you boil it, with maybe just a teaspoonful of honey to taste.

      Tomatoes

      Tomatoes are a universal favourite used widely in many different cuisines. They’re full of antioxidants, including the superantioxidant lycopene, which has strong anti-cancer properties and has been shown to reduce the harmful process of oxidation of LDL (‘bad’) cholesterol in the blood. Try heirloom tomatoes if you can find them. They are as varied in flavour as they are in shape and colour. These charismatic guys can be green, yellow, red, orange and even a deep colour that looks almost black. Red and orange are the sweetest and green is tart. Try sunblush and sundried tomatoes as well for a more intense flavour.

      Selection: Steer clear of hot-house tomatoes. These pale guys contain up to 50 per cent fewer phytochemicals than they would have had if they’d been grown in the sun and left on the vine to ripen. If a tomato isn’t a gorgeous red, it probably isn’t very good. Choose tomatoes that are firm but not rock hard and let them sit out on the counter in an attractive dish.

      They are ripe when they feel supple yet not too soft. Store tomatoes in a cool place on the countertop. You can speed up the ripening process by placing them in a brown paper bag.

      Preparation: Tomatoes are wonderful chopped up, used for fresh salsa (see page 214) or roasted, and go wonderfully with nearly any lunch box combination.

      Watermelon

      A fruit, but worthy of a veggie listing and great in your lunchbox because of its sweet, mouth-watering flavour and its beta-carotene, lycopene and potassium content.

      Selection: Watermelon is definitely seasonal and, as a rule of thumb, the less expensive, the better the fruit. Produce that is in abundance is generally the freshest and markets put them on sale because of this reason. Choose seedless varieties for convenience and make sure it is firm and has no soft spots. Look for a lighter-coloured rough patch somewhere that indicates that the fruit has had some ripening time lying on the ground in the field.

      Preparation: I like to chop it up and sprinkle it in a ‘salty’ lunch box combination to take the edge off the salt. See the ‘Trim Turkey’ lunch box recipe on page 198.