Road Food

So I've been on a destination-free road trip through some of the southwest with a dear friend who proposed we "get outa Dodge" for about 10 days. We piled sleeping bags, pads, pillows and bags into her vehicle and set out from the foothills of California for points south along highway 395 and beyond. This posed a few challenges not the least of which was considering food both for the road and on the road. Eating while traveling in unfamiliar territory can be a daunting prospect and is a concern for many of my clients. Our journey offers the additional challenges of l-o-n-g distances between towns and cross-roads that pose as towns, sometimes with many miles between stops to even get ice for the cooler. So what's a foodie-nutritionist to do? Here are a few tips and tricks that have made our adventure work well so far, and a few additional ones that have worked for previous solo trips:

1 - Bring that cooler, yes, the big one. Get block ice and wrap it in a brown paper bag tightly this will help a little with slowing down the rate of melt. Have freezer strength zip-lock bags for storing things in the cooler that you don't want to get wet as the ice melts.

2 - Bring enough water for at least two days. How much is that? The rule of thumb is to take your body weight and divide that in half. That's the number of ounces you should be shooting for each day just for drinking. If you're going to be cooking, washing up, or doing a sponge-bath or two, be sure to add another two gallons per day.

3 - Don't just nosh your way through the day! Have set amounts of your snacks or food available and eat at intervals, not just because you're bored or need something to do with your hands. Good ways to regulate snacking is to pre-package your noshing items into serving sizes using half-size ziplock baggies. For a nut mix, that would be about 1/4-1/3 cup. For fruit, about 1/2-3/4 cup cut up or a medium apple or banana, or 1 cup veggies such as carrots, celery, jicama, or green beans.

4 - Have a thick dip or spread available for veggies. If it's too thin, I promise you'll end up wearing it as you drive... Humus or other bean dips work well for this purpose.

5 - Minimize the chips and pretzels, they won't do you any favors. They will actually make you hungry in the long run as well as increase the likelihood of creating edema (water retention) in your feet and ankles.

6 - When you need to stop for food, seek out a grocery store rather than a fast food place. You will save money and have a much higher quality meal, even if it's only an apple and cheese!

7 - The meal that seems to be the least likely to be made poorly is breakfast out. Go ahead and order the eggs, skip the potatoes in favor of a side of veggies or fruit. If you can get some salsa on those eggs you will get a little more vegetable matter in as well. Skip the juice and have water. If you have coffee, use real half-n-half, not the fake stuff. Same with sugar, use the real stuff, not the artificial sweeteners (your poor body doesn't know what to do with those chemicals - more on this topic soon). Skip the bready stuff and the cereal stuff. You'll be amazed at how much longer the meal lasts you!

8 - For dinners and lunches, split an entree and order an extra side of the vegetable or salad. Most places serve enough for a small army anyway! This has proven absolutely true on my current trip. We have saved a bunch of money at each meal this way and have never left a restaurant hungry.

9 - If you are in a new area and don't know the selections, put "best dinner Reno" into google (of course you'll put in the town where you are) and you can get some good ideas and reviews. Other ways to get good beta is to use cell phone applications like Yelp, Bing!, and Around Me to help locate restaurants nearby.

10 - Splurge! You're traveling afterall which means you are either away from home for business and need some comfort, or you are on vacation and celebrating. Allow yourself a couple of splurges on desserts or a meal or two that stray from your normal healthy eating habits (if you don't have healthy normal eating habits we need to talk). The catch? Be really picky! Don't settle for mediocre, get the best of whatever it is you are craving. Don't settle for M&Ms, stop by a local chocolate shop and get an amazing deep dark truffle. Don't grab a Dunkin Doughnut when you can find a fabulous french bakery and have a chocolate croissant. Go for the gusto!

Happy travels! Let me know what wonders you discover on the road!

Food As Fuel

The concept of food merely as fuel is something that is foreign to me personally, but it is a common predicament for some of my clients. As a self-proclaimed foodie, I find it sad that someone gets to the point where they feel that eating is a nuisance activity that takes time away from the important things in life. I confess that I find myself believing that these folks just haven't had really good food before, or there must be some emotional trauma leftover from an early age around food and eating that has caused this aversion to the pleasures of savoring a good meal. Sometimes on closer examination it turns out that there is fear of doing something "wrong" when it comes to cooking. Sometimes there is an overwhelming sense of time urgency and stress that short circuits meal time and creates instead a series of grab-and-go snack times.

I think one of the great disservices we have created by way of the convenience driven food industry is the sacrifice of flavor for speed. Then, they to try to fix the mess that got created called a "food product", by adding all manner of flavorings, artificial sweeteners, gums and colorings to try to make up for this poor substitute for real food. Childhoods are spent training tastebuds to stop wishing for real food and forcing them to settle for "fake-tasting-just-add-water-and-wait-for-the-microwave-ding" food products. It's no wonder that the adult palate has given up and gone sour on food in general.

I spend time in my sessions with clients gently poking and prodding and encouraging them to try new things, new combinations, new flavors, and certainly real foods. There just is no substitute for a real vine ripened tomato, or butter from happy pastured cows, or if you're lucky enough to live in California, fresh sun-warmed Meyer lemons from the back yard. As a foodie, I can conjure in my mind the smell of that lemon, the smoothness of the rind, the tanginess of the juice and my mouth automatically starts to water. It doesn't have to be some crazy fancy french restaurant meal to get my eyes to glaze over with delight -- hand me a handful of fresh rosemary or a bunch of riotously colored rainbow chard. This is real food. The real cellular foundational food of human life. These are the ingredients you want to build yourself out of everyday, not the chemical laden, sauced-up cardboard cut-outs that pass for "food" in most grocery stores and fast food establishments.

If you want to reawaken your senses and enjoy one of the simple pleasures of being human, shop the perimeter of your grocery store. That's where all the real food is: the produce, meats, dairy, eggs and often the bulk sections. Make a mad dash down an aisle or two for the toilet paper and maybe the olives and tea. Challenge yourself to start simple. Explore your taste horizons and push your limits just a little. Get fresh. Get smart. Get REAL.