THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH COME MIDDAY, WORKERS OPT TO RUN ERRANDS OR EXERCISE INSTEAD OF EATING.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

Three days a week, around noon, Christine Robertson joins a bunch of co-workers for a three- to four-mile jog. On the other two days, she lifts weights and does a cardio workout at the on-site gym at Countrywide Home Loans headquarters in Calabasas. Then it's back to work.

That period would be termed her ``lunch hour,'' but Robertson never uses it for lunch, preferring instead to exercise and eat later at her desk. Actually going out for a sit-down, salad-entree-dessert affair at Chili's or California Pizza Kitchen? Out of the question, she says.

``When you have a desk job, you're sitting all the time, and by the afternoon, you're lethargic,'' says Robertson, a treasury technician. ``If I exercise, I come back invigorated for the rest of the day.''

Refueled and invigorated. Sounds kind of like what nutritionists say a good lunch is supposed to accomplish.

Her use of the mandatory break for purposes other than eating is hardly unusual. When they bother to take a lunch hour, American employees are using less than half their allotted time to actually eat.

A survey conducted by the International Dairy Association and the National Cheese Institute says the average American uses 24 minutes to eat lunch with only 8 percent actually using the full 60 minutes to savor a meal. The term ``leisurely lunch'' is practically dropping out of the English language.

``I eat at my desk,'' says Rita McGuire, human resources manager at Catalina Express in San Pedro, ``or I do 20,000 errands. There's not a lot of time in our lives to do all that stuff. It's not just me. Out of the 30-35 salaried people, I would say less than half take lunch every day.''

That 24 minutes of true munch time is down from other recent surveys that placed the average eating time at 36 and 29 minutes. Our workers aren't necessarily skipping the meal, however. The Dairy Association/Cheese Institute survey showed that during a typical work week, the average American eats lunch 4.2 times.

Of course, that doesn't specify how they're eating. Technically speaking, you're not skipping the meal if you eat at your desk, hit a drive-thru or log onto the Internet and have one of those new lunch delivery services drop something off at your office.

Rarely classified as ``the most important meal of the day,'' lunch is still, doctors and nutritionists say, the natural midday refueling point for anybody working an eight-hour day shift. And even if we're not using that time to eat, most of us have it at our disposal. Both federal and state labor codes require employers to provide their workers with at least a 30-minute break for every four hours worked.

Lunch is also the meal people skip most often, according to research conducted by the NPD Group, a consumer research organization based in Rosemont, Ill.

Nobody's saying you have to synchronize your chewing and swallowing to the cadence of a 60-minute oven timer, but doctors say that, ideally, workers should be eating healthy meals, not bolting the quickest thing they can pull through a drive-thru window.

``Food is anything you can swallow; fuel is what the body runs on: whole grains, berries, nuts, vegetables; not McNuggets, Jamba Juice and protein bars,'' says Dr. Michael Hirt, an internist and the director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at the Encino Tarzana Regional Medical Center.

The more time you take to eat and relax, the easier the digestive process, doctors say. Still, being the resilient agent that it is, your body will adapt and function even if you give it 30 minutes of refueling. Or even 10 minutes.

It will not, however, accept deprivation, and will signal you with fatigue and low blood sugar once the proverbial tank gets too low.

``If you fill up your car with gas, you don't expect it to take you from L.A. to Seattle. That would be crazy,'' says Hirt, who has a sub-specialty in nutrition. ``If you skip a meal, that's what you're expecting the body to do - take you to Seattle without refueling. That's not the way the body works.''

Many doctors see the increasingly scrunched lunch hour as another indication that Americans are already stressed practically to the breaking point. Got a free moment? Better do something, quick! Time's a-wasting. Our quick eating habits, Hirt says, are simply further proof that we don't know how to use a break like a break.

Dr. Andrew Yellen, a clinical psychologist who practices in Northridge and Sherman Oaks, says making full and personally satisfying use of that hourlong break is as important psychologically as it is physically. Most of us don't get the luxury of the European siesta - an extended nap before returning to work - but we do our bodies a favor by getting away from the work environment.

``Even if somebody doesn't like eating lunch, the idea of the midday break is important,'' says Yellen. ``A lot of people feel that they have to get their work done. They don't understand that they're losing efficiency because they won't be able to concentrate as well.''

``I really enjoy it when I do go out,'' says McGuire, who recently took a rare full-hour lunch to celebrate a co-worker's birthday. ``The idea is great, and it's very healthy, but we just don't do it in human resources or any level of management.''

Why not? If we need to eat, if most of us enjoy eating and socializing, where does that hour go? Or why is a meal less a priority than getting more work done, running errands or fitting in a workout?

It's too easy to blame that tyrannical boss or your own professional ambition. Who can think of lunch - or any kind of down time - when that report is due first thing Monday morning and Smithers two desks over is just waiting for me to slip up so he can move into my corner office? Remember that T-shirt that hard-core exercisers wear: ``You can rest when you're dead''? In today's labor market, some employees feel it applies to them as well.

But that's the paranoid view. Some workers say that by offering services like cafeterias, gyms, postal facilities and dry cleaners on site, large corporations are actually trying to make their employees' lives easier. With every resource nearby, organizing your life becomes less complicated, and you don't necessarily need to burn up your lunch hour to do it.

``It's a completely different work environment,'' agrees Kyser, chief economist with the L.A. County Economic Development Corp. ``Today, there are a lot of single-person households, multiple-earner households. People are trying to cram more things into the day.

``The ideal thing - to go sit and have a nice lunch and just sort of refuel for the afternoon or to have a social lunch with a friend or colleague - is really a luxury.''

Kyser says he has no set lunch-hour routine, although he is often giving presentations at lunch meetings, meaning he gets fed. With offices so near the downtown branch of the L.A. Public Library, sometimes employees will spend time reading and chilling out. There's also a gym, a shoe repair, dry cleaners on site, and a shopping mall and YMCA close by.

Even without considering the competitive frenzy, Americans' lives have become more complicated since the 1990s. Simply put, we're busier. The hours we spend away from work aren't enough to get everything done.

It's the rare employees, then, who can take that 60 minutes and just put the rest of the world on hold. They do exist, and Catalina Express's McGuire has seen them.

``There's a group here that sits in a room and watches a one-hour soap from 1 to 2 p.m. every day,'' McGuire says, ``eating and talking and laughing.''

And, in the process, making certain an important and very healthy tradition doesn't slip away.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos, chart

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Scrunched Lunch

Those valuable midday minutes don't always involve food

Jon Gerung/Staff Artist

(2) Christine Robertson, a treasury technician at Countrywide Home Loans, grabs a bite to eat back at her desk during her lunch hour.

(3) Brian Chase and Christine Robertson enjoy a stretch. ``When you have a desk job, you're sitting all the time ... you're lethargic. If I exercise, I come back invigorated for the rest of the day,'' she says.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer

Chart: Lunch on the Run

Source: National Cheese Institute and the International Dairy Association