Healthy Eating Tips for Travelers

Recently I have been travelling and staying away from home often.  I should admit that eating healthy while away from home is not easy. Here are few tips I learned from experience. Hopefully you will find them useful during your trips.

1) Drink more water than the usual on flights. Circulated air in airplanes, especially during longer flights, gets drier.

2) Also on flights, drinking too much coffee and tea causes more dehydration. Packaged juice products include too much simple sugars, therefore sticking with water would be the healthiest.

3) Try to find hotel rooms with kitchenettes. Even a small kitchen would help you prepare snacks and sandwiches yourself, which can be healthier than those you buy from supermarkets. Plus the more home-made foods you consume, the less you dine out, which is good not only for your health but for your pocket too!

4) Some residences rent out their condo units on nightly basis. These units come with fully-equipped kitchens where you can cook comfortably. These residences offer fully-equipped gyms which most hotels do not (or offer at lower quality). Extended Stay hotels are also available for travels in the U.S. and Canada.

5) Keep healthy snacks like granola bars in your bag. When hunger attacks while visiting an unknown area, you would not have to eat at the first restaurant you come across.

6) The first day you arrive in your hotel room, get bottled water and healthy snacks from a grocer and store them in your room. Some hotel rooms provide them as extras, however they overcharge.

7) Choosing a hotel that offers full breakfast (rather than continental breakfast) can help you find healthy foods early in the day when we usually are the hungriest. Speaking of breakfasts, if you eat a big breakfast, you can skip lunch unless the breakfast is very early. I tend to feel healthier when I eat big breakfast, small afternoon snack and then decent (not big enough to make me sleepy) amount of dinner.

8) Investigate not only the travelled area`s cuisine but also the restaurants nearby the area you will stay before travelling. Sites like Travel Advisor, Yelp and Zagat are very helpful. I personally use their mobile apps more as I tend to do more search while travelling instead of before.

9) Take your stomach and digestion medicines with you.

10) Avoid tap water at all times.

11) Order your meat cooked at least one grade higher than the usual.

12) Get smoothies and vitamin juices at every opportunity (from a clean store!). I tend to consume less vitamins and vegetables while I am travelling and unfortunately most restaurant meals are meat (rather than vegetable) based especially in English and Spanish speaking countries.

13) At the first day of your trip, avoid eating too much or adventuring into new tastes. New spices and condiments may upset your stomach. Try to get yourself accustomed to foreign cuisines slowly.

Please feel free to add other useful tips you know in the comments section. Let`s help fellow travelers eat healthier :-)

Thank you,

Umit