Eating on the Road

1. Eating on the Road

FS: Another person asked about traveling to events and competitions, where most of the time you have to eat at restaurants. Since restaurants don’t always have the best choices from a health perspective, do you have any suggestions for getting foods that are nutritious, and that follow regular eating habits, while you’re traveling?

AK: That’s a really good one. We’ll actually pack food bags with us when we travel, especially when you know you’re going to go to a destination without common foods, and foods you’re used to. If you know a certain cereal or oatmeal is your go-to pre-competition meal, take it with you. You can get a little hotpot and cook it, and take ownership of nutrition for yourself. Kashi makes pre-cooked grains—there’s a lot of ways you can take food with you on the road.

If you’re domestically traveling, and you’re in a hotel, you [can] get sick of eating out—there’s a tendency not to get what you need. Find a local grocery store and find what you can pick through in a complete salad bar—look for a place where you can find what you’re used to eating, where you’re not relying on a menu as much. We have a tendency to overlook the grocery stores and the Whole Foods-type places. When you can walk into any one of those places and buy some bread and deli meat and make a sandwich, that’s going to save you quite a bit of money, and also make you a balanced meal. Salads, rotisserie chickens, you can kind of play around with them that way.

If you are worried about wasting the food, go in with a buddy—You pack it in your luggage and plan for it. If you’re going to country X, where the food is not great, that’s where you tell the athletes to make sure to bring enough to eat right before competitions. I think it’s a matter of planning ahead.

[from Fasterskier.com]

richard