Tera Warner

Making Healthy Choices Easy on the Road

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healthy food for travelMaking Healthy Choices Easy on the Road

– by Caroline Cain

A couple of months ago my boyfriend and a group of colleagues went off to Cologne, Germany, to represent their company at an international trade fair for a week. Here’s how Dominic kept up his healthy eating habits whilst staying in a hotel:

I knew that it was going to be hectic and – though business-wise perfectly organized – that the catering would most likely not be on the priority list. I was not wrong: our daily lunch ‘ration’ consisted of a packaged salad with heavily processed ham and cheese and a good old German pretzel (‘old’ – dry and rock solid). I had a pretzel as I used to love them back in the days (alas, refined flour and other foods just don’t taste as they used to now that I eat a 100% organic, fresh and whole foods diet), but the salad put me off before even touching it. Luckily I came prepared!

Plan Ahead

The week before leaving for Cologne I ordered a small travel blender online – one of the best purchases I’ve made in a long time. Small, efficient and perfect to make tasty smoothies on the go!

eating healthy on the road

Find the Nearest Health Food Store Once You Arrive

The first thing I did after checking in at my hotel, was to locate the closest health food shop / supermarket selling organic fruits & vegetables. At first I was a little concerned about storage as I didn’t have a fridge in my hotel room, but as it turned out I didn’t need one. I prepared my 3 daily meals in my hotel room/bathroom.

I discovered an organic health food shop in one of Cologne’s train stations where I could stock up on rice milk, oat flakes and dried fruit for breakfast (to escape the hotel buffet which was along the same lines as the lunch time salad-pretzel-no-nutrient-trap). I ate my cereal out of the cup part of my travel blender. **Bonus: as well as a nutritious breakfast you save time by not going down to the breakfast buffet so get a longer lie-in.

Keep it Simple

For lunch: banana, avocado, apple, fresh spinach leaves, bottled water and a touch of lime. The perfect smoothie which kept me going until dinner time.

Simple food for travel

When it came to dinner it was a little more difficult as I didn’t want to live off of nothing but smoothies every day for a week. I ate out with colleagues a couple of times. On the evenings I had to eat alone, I decided to avoid the pizza and kebabs and bought olives, carrots, bell peppers, dip and live yogurt to eat in my hotel room. Interestingly enough I found that I wasn’t that hungry in the evenings – a sign of how nutritious my smoothies were.

Get Creative

simples food for travelAs you might have noticed, all of the ingredients mentioned above do not need any refrigeration (except the yogurt, which I bought on the way home) and could easily be stored in my hotel room. If you do need to keep ingredients cool you can either fill the bath or sink with cold water and ice or you can put your ingredients in a plastic bag and hang it out the window (be safe about this!).

You don’t have to go as far as I did when it comes to eating healthily when on the road, but I decided to treat this week as an experiment to see if it could be done on a practical level.

Honestly, I didn’t expect it to be so easy: preparing the smoothie and cleaning the equipment took less than 5 minutes! With a bit of advance planning, you can keep up healthy eating habits on the road:

Your Eat Healthy Travel Packing List

  • A travel blender (you can get good ones on Amazon for around £20-30). (Make sure you buy one where the cup comes with a lid so it can be used ‘to-go’)
  • A pocket knife (to chop the fruit and vegetables)
  • Dish washing liquid and a sponge (to clean your blender, although you could get away with using really hot water, or purchase when you arrive)
  • A spoon (if you intend to make your own cereal)
  • It’s useful to have big coat pockets, if somewhat a little strange to find yourself walking around town with a couple of smoothies in your pockets!

For more healthy travel tips from Raw Chef Kristen Suzanne, click here to read “On the Road: Raw Family Travel Tips.”

What are your tried and tested tips for healthy eating on the road? Please share! We would love to know!