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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Hannah Twiggs

Hang on, £15 salads – when did eating lunch at your desk become so expensive?

Pret Protein
Once the symbol of restraint, the salad has become lunch’s most ambitious – and expensive – offering - (Getty/iStock)

Does anyone remember sub-£3 meal deals? A sandwich, crisps and a drink for less than the price of a fancy coffee. Not good food, necessarily, but comprehensible food. Cheap, filling, forgettable. Lunch: done.

I was in a Pret a Manger the other day and found myself staring at an array of large salad bowls hovering around the £15 mark. Fifteen. They looked virtuous, they looked plentiful, they looked like something you could eat and feel pleased about. But 15 pounds? On lunch? With no drink, no snack, no polite nod to the idea that this is meant to be a functional meal in the middle of a working day? What, exactly, happened here?

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