How to Keep Nutrition on Track when Travelling with Kids
Travel and vacation is all about taking a break from the ordinary, but it’s often difficult to stick to your diet and wholesome nutrition when on the road and travelling with kids. There are restaurants, drive-thrus and buffet lines, time zone interruptions, cultural culinary delicacies and busy schedules. However, holidays shouldn’t un-do your family’s health goals, because you’ll all come home with more than just great memories: bloating, digestive upset and moodiness are all common consequences of travel nutrition sabotage!
Here are some helpful tips to help keep the family’s health on track while travelling with kids on vacation and even on one-day outings.
How to Keep Nutrition On Track With Travelling with Kids
1. Don’t sabotage your snacks
The worst culprit for sabotaging healthy eating are those moments when you’re off schedule, running around, coordinating activities and children and hunger strikes. This moment, affectionately known as ‘hangry’, is anger caused by hunger. It manifests as a cranky state from a lack of food. More precisely, ‘hanger’ is really a blood sugar crash and results in moodiness.
Whether you, your travel companions or children are hangry, the best prevention is having an arsenal of prepared and healthy snacks. I’m not talking granola bars, chips or Krispie squares, but rather a variety of nutritious, whole food snacks. Like their convenience-food counterparts, nutritious snacks must be portable, easy to grab and distribute, and simple to pack and store.
To make the most of your snacks and avoid ‘hanger’, follow the Protein-Fiber-Fat rule of eating to maintain blood sugar levels – which means include these three important nutrients in your snacks.
Here are some examples of blood sugar-balancing snacks:
Discover more meal and snack ideas for travel here.
2. Pack light and bring a suitcase with food
If you’re planning to visit a warm destination, all you really need to pack for clothing is your bathing suit, flip flops and beach towels. So pack light and reserve a suitcase to bring your and your children’s…
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