I feel the same. Sadly it's quite hard to find a healthy lunch near my office, and this is why I'm overweight.

Your inability to find healthy lunch near your office isn't why you are overweight.

Of course not, I wasn't being entirely serious, but it's certainly a contributing factor. I enjoy the social aspect of going out for lunch (and the flavour aspect, of course). It's difficult to eat out and eat something healthy, even salads are soaked in high-calory dressings.

Perhaps this Norwegian "art" of eating a bland lunch that "should be a disappointment" is someone's twisted idea of a good time. But it's not mine.

To be fair: I'm American and live in Norway and have for a bit over 5 years now. I have found lunches to be a bit different. While you can sit by yourself and read, you can also be part of a group really easily.

In language and civics classes, we were encouraged to sit down and talk to others at lunches and breaks - especially if we were working somewhere with a common lunch time. I don't find social pressure to bring what everyone else brings and others are usually a bit jealous when someone brings in something yummy. In context, the lunches are about like a peanut butter or baloney sandwich or something. Not really... bland, per se, but non-offensive. You can also pass some of the options off as healthy, which helps. In any case, you still get some of those social aspects even if you don't get the change of scenery that usually goes along with them.

Having easy access to decent food is by far the easiest way to maintain your weight. That is literally the first thing you should try to achieve if you want to lose or maintain weight. I don't even know what your point is if any at all.

Well, given the fact that they lunch out regardless, the proximate cause is likely that all the food around is covered in fat.

Why don't you... make your own lunch?

This is not about bringing homemade lunch though. In what countries do you not bring homemade lunch?

My experience in the US is that office workers don't routinely bring lunch if there's a cafeteria or other convenient lunch places. (Some do, of course.)

In the US, I've worked at several places where I've gotten strange looks for bringing in lunch. Don't know why exactly, I can take ~15 minutes in the morning and pack something better than most lunch places serve. I would understand if I was bringing in garlicky curry or something similar that causes the break room to smell, but I normally bring in a sandwich.

I think part of this might be that it looks 'cheap'.