I've seriously considered buying MREs because I can't be bothered to meal prep.

Yes, it does end.

Do people not eat salads? Like some spinach, a nice vinaigrette, some nuts, and maybe a little sliced baked chicken, with a few raspberries or something?

A Br*tish person complaining about lunch, that’s rich.

Maybe try having a proper one, like the rest of Europe, and you will find the answer to all of your complaints.

What's wrong with Kramer's method of just bringing a sleeve of crackers to eat at work?

Everything bagel, cream cheese, provolone, tomato/cucumber in that order. Eat open faced. You're welcome.

Grow the fuck up.

Well, what do you want to eat? I guess if you don't want to prepare your own food, those are the only options, whether at work or at home. Otherwise, make whatever you want and take it to work. Cook more food than you need for your dinner and take the leftovers. Make a salad (tons of options for them), make a sandwich. You don't have to eat canned soup, make some nice homemade soup and freeze a bunch of individual servings to grab and take. The possibilities are endless.

Microwaving some leftovers might be an option. You get the great food you put effort into making, without actually having to make the effort at lunchtime.

I don't understand; could somebody please explain?

Really? I've been an adult for quite a while and I always look forward to lunch (all meals, actually). Plenty of quick, simple, and appealing meals to make.

I think something that is missing in the minds of the "but you could just..." posters here is that the mindset of the OP doesn't always come from laziness, immaturity, or the inability to understand how to pack a sandwich, it sometimes comes from crippling or barely functional depression.

I work from home and the thought of even making a sandwich most days in the middle of the day is just too much. I don't want to make a sandwich; I want to go back to bed for eight to ten years and I agree that lunch is the fucking worst.

(But so is breakfast, and dinner, and all of the meetings, and work, and life generally speaking, etc.)

Breakfast is the worst. Sausage, ham, pancakes, cereal, eggs, hash browns, or toast. Want a breakfast burrito? Take a normal burrito, add scrambled eggs. Want a breakfast sandwich? Swap out sliced bread with english muffin or bagel, optionally add an egg.

Screw that. I'm having leftover spaghetti for breakfast.

Shit take.

It’s frustrating as an adult with ARFID/eating disorders. I can’t bring myself to eat leftovers because I worry that they are contaminated. I’ve thrown away so much food because I won’t reuse a pasta sauce jar if it has been opened.

A lot of the common “easy” meals are things that I absolutely will not eat - spaghetti, canned veggies, ground beef. Sometimes I struggle with eating ramen. It’s fucking embarrassing but I literally cannot help it. I will gag and puke if my brain decides I can’t eat something.