On the road: healthy snacks for travelers

One of the toughest aspects of being on the road is attempting to maintain a healthy diet. If you’re a road warrior, you’re no doubt familiar with the typical scenario: you arrive at your connecting airport, have 45 minutes or so before your next flight, are famished, and need to quickly find something to eat.

Under that pressure and with healthy alternatives few and far between, it’s far too easy to succumb to the siren song of the golden arches, the guilty pleasures of the Wok ‘n Roll, or the sweet aromas of Cinnabons. As a result, many of us end up eating stuff that under normal circumstances we’d studiously avoid.

If you travel regularly or even if you’re just looking for a healthy alternative to what’s available at work for breakfast or snacks, there are some simple solutions. All you need to do is plan ahead and invest a few minutes and a few dollars in preparing for your next trip.

What are the keys to eating healthy on the road?

First, let’s review the keys to eating healthy and feeling your best - whether you’re on the road or at the office - they’re fairly simple:

1. Eat light
2. Drink plenty of water
3. Consume caffeine and alcohol in moderation

Let’s look at these three issues separately.

Eat light: this is the heart of this post. By eating light we want to avoid fatty (especially saturated fat) and sugary foods, and empty calories. When it comes to snacks, there ARE healthy alternatives to airport food courts, and I’ll go into some of those alternatives in a moment.

Water: this is hardly a news flash, but it bears repeating: stay hydrated, whether you’re flying internationally or are holed up in your office! It’s especially important when flying, however, as the air being recirculated in aircraft cabins is quite dry. Moreover, caffeine and alcohol can exacerbate this condition, contributing to the risk of dehydration. The general rule is that you should drink ~12 oz. of water for each hour you fly.

Caffeine & alcohol in moderation: as an addicted, er, dedicated coffee drinker, this one’s a bit tough for me. In general, don’t go nuts with the quad espresso’s… a cup or two of caffeinated coffee is OK, just be mindful that coffee is a diuretic and you don’t want to be dehydrated on the road. As for alcohol, my only advice is to be careful when going out to dine with a group of colleagues. The best strategy: drink sparingly before dinner, and you’ll be much more able to be disciplined about what you eat during dinner! Keep “all things in moderation” as your mantra, and you should be just fine.

Healthy snack alternatives!

In general, you should try to snack on foods that have a high nutrient and low fat content. Foods with the most nutrients per calories provided are the most desirable. For example, broccoli has a moderate calorie value per serving, but is loaded with nutrients. A candy bar or can of soda on the other hand, is loaded with calories but has little nutritional value. The following foods are nutrient rich:

• Raw vegetables
• Unsweetened fruit juice
• Fresh fruit
• Pumpkin or sunflower seeds
• Fat free yogurt
• Cheese
• Nuts
• Bread, bagels - especially those made with whole grains
• Peanut butter
• Frozen yogurt
• Dried fruit

That’s the good news. If you’ve wandered around a typical airport however, you’ve probably not come across a raw vegetable stand. You may encounter an occasional fresh apple or banana, however, and they are great alternatives to a McGriddle, McMuffin or McWhatever.

The best approach which will offer you the greatest control is to bring snacks along with you. The simplest way to do this is to get some Clif Bars or Larabars and bring several in your briefcase or daily bag:

Clif Bars come in a variety of flavors, and each contains about 220-240 calories and ~40 calories from fat. The saturated (heart-unhealthy) fat content is low - only ~1.5 g. Total fat is generally about 5 grams or so. Carbohydrate content varies by flavor, but should be in the vicinity of 40 grams. Zero cholesterol; low sodium. Clif Bars have a soft, cookie-like consistency and are very tasty. They are available at a variety of retailers including Wal-Mart. (Clif Bars are $ .98 each at my local Wally World.)

Larabars’ claim to fame is that each is made with no more than 6 ingredients and contains NO added sugar. The ingredients are completely unprocessed - just raw nuts and fruits. Larabars come in a variety of flavors like Cherry Pie, Chocolate Coconut, and Cashew Cookie. Nutritionally, each Larabar has around 200 calories, total fat of about 9-12 grams (fat calories range from 80-100,) zero cholesterol, and very little sodium. Again, saturated fat is quite low - 1 to 2 grams per bar. Larabars are available at select retailers and Amazon.com A box of 16 bars is $22.35 at Amazon, plus shipping if you aren’t using Amazon Prime. Without shipping then, they’re about $1.40 each.

My favorite…

For me, the best alternative is to put together snacks myself and bring them along on the road. The snacks I assemble don’t take up much room in my bag, AND I have complete control over what I’ll be eating when I suffer hunger pangs in an airport or hotel room. About ten minutes in your local supermarket will yield a terrific supply of ingredients:

All I do is put an assortment of the items of my choice in Ziploc bags. My favorite is to include a handful of almonds (”Whole Natural” - no sodium added,) around 8 prunes, which of course are in the midst of being repositioned as “dried plums,” several dried apricots, and a small handful of pumpkin seeds. The only downside to this is that dried fruit is high in natural sugars. If you’re trying to lose weight, you may wish to simply bring along a couple of apples or buy them in the airport.

Cost wise, the ingredients shown above cost ~$20 and yielded a dozen snack bags, for a cost of ~$1.60 or so apiece. I had a good deal of the granola left over.

The combination described above breaks down as follows from a nutritional standpoint: ~500 calories, 22 grams of fat, 198 fat calories (from the nuts and pumpkin seeds,) zero cholesterol, 12 mg. sodium, and 58 grams of carbs. It should be noted that although nuts are a higher fat food, it is essentially heart-healthy unsaturated fat. Each handful of almonds I put in the bags (shown below) contains only one gram of saturated fat; the pumpkin seeds, approximately a gram and a half of saturated fat.

Grab a bottle of water and one of these and you have an excellent, healthy snack. Plus you don’t have to stand in line

A Sausage Egg McMuffin, on the other hand, offers: 450 calories, 27 grams fat, 250 fat calories, 285 mg. cholesterol, 420 mg. sodium, and 30 grams carbohydrates. A McDonald’s “Big Breakfast” w/ regular size biscuit contains 740 calories, 48 grams of fat, 430 calories from fat, 555 mg. cholesterol, 1560 mg. sodium, and 51 grams carbohydrates. Yikes.

Another alternative is to pick up some of the individual servings of peanut butter being marketed by Jif as “Jif To Go” and some pretzel sticks: put a handful of pretzel sticks in a Ziploc bag, and bring along a couple of servings of peanut butter, and you have a healthy alternative to the airport food court. This works best if you’re using a hard sided briefcase as pretzel sticks will of course tend to break if knocked around a bit in a soft sided bag.

Finally, one last alternative I want to mention that may work for you is to throw some broccoli florets or baby carrots in a Ziploc bag along with a handful of pumpkin seeds or nuts. From a nutritional standpoint, this is absolutely your best option. If you can’t bring yourself to try this on the road or it’s not practical (fresh vegetables aren’t going to stay very fresh when you’re on the road for hours,) just give it a shot as a snack at work - it’s immeasurably healthier than an egg sandwich or candy bar!!!

The most critical ingredient…

It will likely come as no surprise that the most critical ingredient in all of this is you. You have choices when you travel. You and only you determine what you put in your body on the road. If you eat healthy or you eat a bunch of garbage, it’s up to you and no one else.

The next time you have a trip approaching, make a promise to yourself - and by extension, to your loved ones - that you’ll do a better job of eating healthy on the road, and then follow through on that promise. Plan ahead, buy or assemble some healthy snack alternatives, and you’ll enjoy the fact that you’ve exercised more control over your life by choosing a healthy alternative to all the fat and cholesterol being peddled at the airport food court.

Try it - you’ll thank yourself in the long run. Travel safe… and healthy!

-kc 7/2/08

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