Does the military teach you to work through lunch?

Not just the military but also certain carriers. I have spent 30 years working maintenance in sawmills. If the plants broke down you don't stop until it's back up and running. Some times we will have the reg. labors helping us and break or lunch comes and they just walk off. We have had days where you end up taking both breaks and lunch all at one time, or still be there working when everyone else go's home.

Guess it's brown bag time.....................

What is this lunch thing you speak of?

No and I think you are misreading the situation. You couldn't reserve a conference room except during the chow time hours. This is most likely due to the other people who were thinking specifically about their chow time reserving conference rooms ahead of you.

Now when I was in, I was a motivated go-getter who thought the world would fall apart if I wasn't in the shop. So there were many times where I'd work through chow or not eat anything at all.

I've actually had my SNCOs order me to go get chow because they knew it was the only way to get me to stop working. If I happened to bring my chow to work, they would order me to stay out of the office between so and so a time.

I understand why they did it, because my brain wouldn't turn off any other way.

Another thing to consider is a lot of this comes from personal pride. We are taught to function with less so in case of an emergency we can survive with less. But it tricks our brain into thinking we don't need it. We feel hungry, but if we're busy, we brush it off and tell ourselves that we've gotten by with less.

The military doesn't want us working through lunch, it just trains us to be able to live without it. It's our personal drive which forces us to sit behind our desks during chow time. Believe me, I've known people who are counting down the minutes until the chow hall opens and they're the first ones to ask to go to chow.

Well to an extent they may. I know you certainly don't pull an aircraft over to a convenient cloud just because it's time for lunch. Sure the same goes for ground pounders in certain situations. However when not doing some operation that prevented it, most of us would go to the club for lunch and when I was in positions where I needed to schedule routine meetings the time between 1100 & 1300 were generally off limits. Even in Battle Staff and CAOC situations time was set aside for lunch breaks. The same was pretty much true in my civilian job, but in that life there were hardly ever things going on that would remotely require working through lunch. I often had lunch at my desk, but that was my choice, not something the employer required.

I ate at my desk, now that I've returned to the Hospitality Industry, I eat standing up, in 5 to 10 minutes, I belive I was taught to work through or skip meals in the Hospitality industry, long before joining the Military.
Upon securing my next Corporate Position, I'd like to say, I'm going to try to be better to myself and take lunches, but it usually turns out to be several breaks throughout the day rather than an hour lunch.

I usually eat at my desk while I am working lol.

I usually have lunch at my desk, and pull away from work. I am however ready to engage at any given point if need be. It's a good midway point.

I know I work through lunch.

SGT Ben Keen you mean some people enjoy their lunch not at a desk or have a lunch every day?