Making a healthy sandwich for lunch is a great way to insure that you don’t eat the leftover pizza from last night’s call team. A really good sandwich which balances protein and carbs is also a great way to get through a long call night. Keeping your energy up when you are up all night on call is difficult but there are tricks to maintain energy for call. The most important way to have good energy on call is to eat good quality food every 3-4 hours. Sandwiches are great for call because they are so easy to make, easy to store and easy to put in a pocket to eat on the go.
Pick good ingredients whenever you can. It’s worth paying a little more to have food that is just food (and not a lot of fillers, corn syrup, transfats, etc). Make sure you get high quality bread – 100% whole wheat is best, but if you really don’t like whole wheat, at least try to get as much whole grain in the bread as you can. Whenever possible, add veggies to add nutritional value.
Peanut butter sandwiches have the advantage of not needing refrigeration. You can keep them in your white coat pocket if you want to (an advantage on a busy day). You can stay traditional (i.e. peanut butter and jelly), or up the nutritional content by adding banana (or other fruit) or with other unusual combinations.
Egg salad sandwiches are great in the middle of the night when you are on call. 101cookbooks.com egg salad recipe is a pretty classic recipe which is really wonderful. If you want to up the protein and decrease the fat leave out some or al of the egg yolks and use lowfat mayonnaise. There are other options for traditional egg salad recipes, too
Tuna or chicken salad sandwiches can be made with classic recipes, or less traditional ingredients that up the nutritional content such as spicy tuna salad, or other unique tuna salad recipes.
Lean meat (chicken, ham, pork, beef) makes a great, high protein sandwich. Add cheese, tomatoes, spinach, shredded carrots or other veggies to increase the nutritional value. If you are watching your weight use low-fat cheese and avoid mayonnaise. If you use hummus or avocado instead of mayonnaise or other spreads you’ll also make the sandwich more nutritious.
Here are a few other sites to help you be creative with your sandwich ideas:
Healthy Sandwich Recipes & Tips