Is eating healthy and travelling mutually exclusive?
Not necessarily, but if you have any kind of food restrictions (gluten and dairy) or even if you just want to avoid toxic vegetable oil that restaurants dredge on everything, it can be tricky to know what to eat when on the go.
So how do you eat on the road and find good food no matter where you are?
Great question. (Thanks Stella Orange!)
Airports are stressful, crankiness-inducing places as is. Add in the fact that there’s dozens of fast food and pretty much zilch in the way of health food, and it can be disastrous for your health and sanity.
But there’s many ways to keep on track and not have to compromise your values or your palate.
You can bring your own food, but you have to know how to pack it and what to say to TSA agents…I’ve actually gotten kicked out of airports before for trying to bring my own healthy food. Don’t let that expensive food get trashed at security!
We’ll cover:
- What to do if you’re diabetic or have low blood sugar
- How to prepare in advance before your trip so you don’t have to starve
- Healthy snack ideas that you can grab at the grocery store
- Things YOU can do to make healthy food more accessible
- What is “camelling it” and why you might already be doing it
- And what to order in case you have to eat at a restaurant
Today’s Gut’s & Glory podcast goes over my personal tips for traveling without incident, and more importantly, without eating junk that makes you feel sick upon arrival—or worse, mid air!
Comment below and let me know your favorite tricks for traveling smart and eating healthy.
TRANSCRIPTION
Hello everyone, welcome, I'm Summer Bock, and this is Guts and Glory. I have a question here, one of our frequently asked questions, this one's from Stella Orange, “Eating on the road, how you find good food, no matter where you are?” This is a great question, because I spent 14 years not eating gluten at all, I spent 6 of those years not eating gluten or dairy, and there was a lot of different foods throughout time that I really struggled with, and you know, you don't want to be stuck in a food desert, where there's just convenience stores around with absolutely no real food around you.
I was just in a convenience store last night, and I was still shocked. How come they haven't caught up? I would love to be in on that whole new convenience store thing, where I want to start this, somebody go in on this with me, call me, let's do this angel investors, call me. What we need to do is we need to do a Whole Foods version of the convenience store at all the BP's or Conico's or whatever, and have all healthy food available. It will be amazing, and it will crush it, and a lot of the people who stop there would actually buy that stuff, I promise you they would.
First of all, we don't live in that world, so let's talk about what to do based on the world that we do live in. There's a couple things you want to think about, with travelling, let's say you're travelling by air, when you're travelling you want to think about what foods you can bring with you and through the security. I'll give you a couple tricks, TSA would hate me for sharing this, but I will say, that if you say that you have blood sugar issues, you can usually get away with bringing food through TSA.
Also, diabetics can get through with stuff like that, they can bring their own food, and then most other issues, you actually need a doctor's note, but it's really easy to get a doctor's note and you'll get an exception for all the food and drink rules. Consider that, it's worth it for those of you who really do need to pack a lot of crazy foods with you. I've done it, I've been the person, I call it camelling it, where you have to bring your extra hump with you, so that you can make it wherever you're going.
Some of the best things to bring with you are like salads, I love getting like those little boxes of salad, you can dump hummus on it if you want to sneak through without having to break the paste rule or whatever, dump the hummus on the salad, put carrots in there, and then have some smoked salmon or something. It's a great way to travel. I also recommend bringing some dried nuts, and just various little snacks to have on hand, some Larabars or whatever, just so you have something in your back pocket in case of emergencies. In general, I'm going to say, one of your better options is going to a grocery store and just picking up a few things there. You can go to the grocery store and pick up cold cuts, and put that on a salad and maybe put some vinegar and oil on it, or find a salad dressing that's decent for you. You can put tuna on the salad or sardines, like I said, hummus is a great staple while you're transporting yourself around the globe, but especially in the US it's so easy to find here.
Let's see, some of my other suggestions are, when you're ordering food out, is to order salads, ask them if you can do steamed vegetables, ask them if they'll be willing to roast things instead of frying them in oil. Avoiding vegetable oil is really ideal, it's one of the big scary things that ends up in a lot of foods when you're eating out that's just not good for you, and it increases inflammation in the body. Super hard on the liver too. That's just some ways to eat some clean foods as you're travelling, let's see, what else. Packing healthy snacks to go, always think about that, but when I leave to travel, I always drink a smoothie before I get to the airport, and then I usually have one meal packed, ready to go with me, and then I know that at least I have one meal while travelling I like to eat on the plane, and then I will eat out wherever I get to, whatever restaurant I can get to when I land.
If I know I'm not going to have access to another restaurant, I will bring two meals, and that's just what I do. I have gotten kicked out of the airport before for bringing sauerkraut through, the TSA guys were like, “This is a paste,” I was like, “This is not a paste, this is vegetables.” They're like, “Blah-di-blah, there's water in here,” I was like, “There's no water, look at the ingredients, there has been no water added to this, this is cabbage and salt,” like seriously? They're like, “You're going to have to throw this away,” and I was like, “I'm absolutely not throwing this away,” I was like, “Give me my sauerkraut back,” and they were like, “Take her out of here,” and they kicked me out of the TSA security line at JFK airport, but I wasn't that worried because I went around, and went in another entrance and still got to where I was going, but yes, I did have to eat some of my sauerkraut and threw the rest away, it was totally depressing.
This was before I knew the trick to say I have blood sugar issues, but sauerkraut is a great thing to travel with, it doesn't go bad, and I can't swear to you that it's going to make it through any health code exemptions, they always say it needs to stay below I think it's 43 degrees, but this is a traditional fermented food, it's very well preserved, and as long as you're eating it within a short amount of time or getting wherever you're going and putting it in the fridge, it's going to be fine, it's a great travel food. I had friends who went on a tandem bike trip down the coast, and I gave them a quart of sauerkraut and they said it was one of their favorite things to bring on the trip, because while they were travelling, every few days they were able to dig into their little sauerkraut jar and have this fresh snack with vegetables, it made it so easy to travel.
Alright, folks, and Stella Orange, I hope that helps. My biggest recommendations for you is vegetables and meat. When you go out to eat, just stick with vegetables and meat, try not to go too crazy, look for the health food shops, look for the whole foods, look for a juice bar, a smoothie bar, these things are popping up more and more, even when you go to the airport, even in Atlanta, Georgia, they have a place called Freshies, I think it's called, or Freshens, must be. They have salads, and quinoa, and things like that. The world is becoming a better place, and the more that we buy these things, and the more that we ask for these things when we go out, we're basically demanding that the culture shape and form around us.
These things are going to get more and more accessible, so keep asking for the things that you want to see, I think it's really important because I want it, I want to see all these great, healthy options everywhere I go, and I want to see one of these amazing convenience stores where all the food there is super healthy. We're going to just walk down the street, grab a little snack, really cheap snack, really healthy, local vegetables, let's do it.
