Summer Road Trips:
How to Stay Sane with Your Eating

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It’s almost the end of summer. Do you have a vacation coming up or a weekend get-away planned? When you plan a road trip, whether you drive or fly, what’s one of the things you think about? Come on…admit it…FOOD! Where are you going to eat? What are you going to eat? It’s so easy to lose track of healthy eating on a road trip. After all, your favorite treat foods are everywhere. All of these foods and their insane portion sizes calling out your name. How do you remain sane and not totally lose track of healthy eating while on a road trip?

Think about your last plane trip. Were you in a rush to get to the airport so you skipped breakfast and maybe lunch? Oh that’s right, you had airplane pretzels for breakfast and lunch. By the time you reached your hotel room, could you eat the door off the mini bar? Maybe you ordered room service but noshed on all the junk in the mini bar before room service delivered.

I asked Peter Greenberg for some of his travel tips. You may know him as the travel editor for the Today Show and the author of the book The Traveler’s Diet: Eating Right and Staying Fit on the Road. I was particularly interested in airport selections. His book includes a survey of the 15 largest airports in the country. Each menu for each restaurant in the airport was analyzed, and those with at least one healthy option were counted as 'good'. Topping the list were Chicago-O'Hare, Detroit, San Francisco International, NY-JFK, Dallas, Denver and Atlanta. He found that even in smaller airports like Richmond, Grand Rapids, or Bozeman, MT, healthy choices are still available. Check out Mr. Greenberg’s website at http://www.petergreenberg.com for more information.

I’ve been traveling frequently for work this summer and can tell you that I was pleasantly surprised to find at least one or two healthy options in most airports. While waiting for flights, I would walk the terminals to see what was available and scattered among the typical fast food choices I found a yogurt parfait with fresh fruit and granola, a turkey sandwich on whole grain bread, bottles of milk and juice, bananas, nuts and cheese pizza. I tried the yogurt parfait one time and it was low fat and delicious as well as the turkey sandwich. It’s takes a little more effort but you can find some good selections.

Mr. Greenberg’s next piece of advice is to call the hotel and find out if your room has a mini bar. If it does, ask the hotel to clean it out and restock it with healthier options. However, unless you are a VIP guest, they may not restock for you so do it yourself. I think this is a great idea. Bring along or pick up on the way to the hotel easy-to-find items such as yogurt or smoothie drinks, nuts or trail mix, bottled water, fruit, baked chips, green tea, dried fruit or even dark chocolate to satisfy your cravings. This way, when you arrive at your hotel in a starved state of mind (I speak from personal experience here), you have choices instead of consuming mass quantities of less-than-healthy mini bar food.

Healthy snacks are also a must for your road trip. Get the cooler out of storage, buy a couple of cold packs and stock it up with yummy, healthy options like we talked about above including yogurt, smoothie drinks, nuts, fruit or dried fruit, trail mix (yes, you can toss in some peanut M&Ms), or cheese sticks. You get the idea. Or make sandwiches, pick up some fresh fruit and ready-to-eat salads and have a picnic along the way. Rest stops usually have tables and it makes for a nice break.

If you want in depth information about tasty, healthy food selections at all types of restaurants, check out the book called Eat Out, Eat Right by Hope Warshaw. It’s loaded with great ideas. You can stay sane with your eating by putting some of these easy tips into action before you leave the house.