There are many reasons to brown-bag your lunch. Maybe you prepare sandwiches or salads at home to save money, or to control calories and nutrients as an alternative to fast food. Perhaps your work schedule (or that of your kids, spouse or others you feed) simply doesn’t allow time to go out for the midday meal – or you want to save the gas you would burn driving to restaurants. You might even be lucky enough to work at home, so lunch in your own kitchen is a matter of routine.

You might even be concerned about the environmental impact of what you eat and where you buy it. For example, factory farming of chicken and other livestock consumes resources, leaves behind potentially harmful waste and troubles anyone with a heart for animals. Still, many people and families are not ready to go completely vegetarian, so we look for ways to reduce our consumption of animal proteins – flexitarians, we’re called, and it’s a good start, anyway.

The question is: how do you make simple, fast but healthy sandwiches or salads, better, ones that are economical, convenient and earth-friendlier. Here’s a recipe that meets all the criteria, plus it can taste great (according to your own personal preferences). So go ahead and try it – knowing that this chicken-bean salad sandwich is environmentally responsible might well make it taste better, too.

The primary ingredients are as follows:

Chicken – or tuna: You could make it off the bone, but super-convenient canned varieties are increasingly popular, available and tasty in salad-sandwich mix recipes. White meat is lower in saturated fats, and a solid source of animal protein that staves off hunger hours after a meal. Tuna can be substituted for chicken in this recipe.

Garbanzo beans (chickpeas, cece beans): Sold for as little as $2.49/gallon in warehouse stores, these beans are healthy, versatile, inexpensive and environment-sustainable. A half-cup serving provides six grams of protein, plus 5.5 grams of fiber (about 22 percent of your daily recommended intake), a good means to moderate blood sugar uptake into the bloodstream. Garbanzo fiber is both soluble and insoluble, able to ferry cholesterol out of the body along with reduction of constipation and prevention of digestive disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome and diverticulosis. And there’s more: Garbanzos are high in manganese, folate. copper, phosophorus, iron and a trace mineral called molybdenum, which detoxifies sulfites present in many processed foods and which can otherwise cause rapid heartbeat, headache and disorientation.

Avocado/guacamole mix: What’s so convenient about avocados? Grocery stores now sell this fruit skinned and pitless in tubs, which makes them much more busy-morning friendly. Used in place of butter on bread or mayo in a salad mix, avocados add heart-health monounsaturated fat that can moderate cholesterol, add potassium, folate, lutein and vitamin E. And a study published in the Journal of Nutrition (March 2005) found that consuming avocado with certain other vegetables (carrots, lettuce, spinach) improves your body’s ability to absorb health-promoting antioxidants known as carotenoids (specifically, zeaxanthin, alpha-crotene and beta-carotene). Bottom line: mix this with whatever healthy foods you are eating and you get more a synergistic effect – and you can’t beat the buttery sensory experience.

Other ingredients are a matter of taste: My preference is a lemony-picante mix, which is detailed at the end of this recipe under “Taste.”

Preparation:

First, mash up 1-2 cups of garbanzo beans, after which you mix in a cup of diced chicken. The proportion of beans to chicken is a matter of personal preference. This is where your earth-friendly considerations come into play: it takes about three times the plant protein to produce chickens than if we just ate protein-rich plants – orthodox thinking for vegetarians. If you’re not ready to go full-vegetarian (I personally am not), supplementing chicken with beans is a step in that direction.

Taste:

This is where your own creativity and personal preferences come into play. If you like things spicy, try mixing in a teaspoon each of turmeric, paprika and black pepper. Or, to add some crunch substitute two tablespoons of spicy hot jardinera, which generally is sold pickled in oil, in place of the black pepper. Add about four tablespoons of lemon juice, and 3-4 tablespoons of mustard. Chop in a handful of fresh cilantro, or two tablespoons of the dried version. Other options: finely chopped onions or celery.

Serve:

This can be a great mix into a green salad, with a dollop or two of avocado. But for an all-American meal, put it on whole-grain bread with avocado coating the inside of both slices.

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Russ Klettke is a business writer, an ACE (American Council on Exercise) certified fitness trainer and also the author of “A Guy’s Gotta Eat, the regular guy’s guide to eating smart” (Marlowe & Co., 2004, with Deanna Conte, MS RD LD), available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and more than 70 public library systems in the U.S., Canada and Europe. See other articles by this writer on practical approaches to fitness and nutrition for busy people.