Reflections on Travel - Food

Some quick thoughts on eating on the road. It's really hard to eat healthy at home and under the most ideal circumstances, but when you're traveling, it's a huge conundrum. Not only are healthy foods in short supply, but you don't have a refrigerator or a facility to prepare them. When we're at home, we eat a lot of fresh fruits and veggies, and have fresh fruit smoothies every day, something we missed on the road, but we managed.

Dried fruits like raisins and prunes (my personal favorite) help in the fiber category, and fresh raw veggies during meals worked well, especially with a little ranch dressing. Apples were probably the only fresh fruit option, and a good one, because they have to travel well, and you can't beat them for convenience and value.

There were plenty of chance to buy food in whatever town we visited. There was usually a grocery store, and the small convenience stores carried dried fruit and usually an apple or two. We generally avoided bananas.

Either way, we managed, and ate fairly healthy meals. If we couldn't pull it off because of limited access, we followed the following mantra: if you're going to eat unhealthy foods, don't eat them for two meals in a row, and always follow them up with something healthy. Words to live by.

I will say this-it ain't easy. The world is simply geared towards cheap, processed, and unhealthy foods. They are everywhere, and you cannot escape them, and they make them seductive and tasty. And then people wonder why there's an obesity epidemic. It takes a lot of work to buy and prepare healthy foods, but you do what you gotta do. Otherwise you become the poster child for the Rachel Ray diet.

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to Rob Owen-Wahl for the pic.