How Do I Eat Healthy When I'm Traveling for Business?
Dr. David Katz answers the question: 'Eating Healthy When Traveling for Work?'
February 1, 2009 -- Question: How do I eat healthy when I'm traveling for business?
Answer: I travel quite a lot for work, and so the challenges of eating well away from home affect me as they affect many people. My first strategy is to put myself in charge of the choices I make on a plane or in an airport by packing up a snack pack. I take an insulated snack pack filled with nutritious foods -- fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, dried fruit, whole grain cereals in a Ziploc bag, nonfat yogurt -- those kinds of things. I take that with me everywhere I go. In fact, I have more frequent flier miles on my snack pack than most business travelers probably have.
And then, when you are eating out at a restaurant, you need to ask a few questions about sauces and dressings and spreads. You need to know the basics. You want to avoid creams, sources of saturated fat, excesses of calories you really don't need. You may ask to have those on the side. You may ask if dishes can be grilled or baked or broiled, rather than fried. But usually those are options on a menu in the first place.
Have a salad. Choose poultry or fish; have it grilled. Keep things relatively simple. There really is no reason why you can't have a hearty, satisfying meal most anywhere you go that meets fairly high nutrition standards.
One of the challenges that makes obesity so common is we have so much food everywhere we go. But the flip side is we also have a lot of food options everywhere we go, so if you're committed to eating well, whether it's as you travel -- in which case you have the snack pack -- or whether it's at a restaurant -- in which case you have some decisions to make, you really can get the job done.
It's not rocket science; it requires some basic knowledge of nutrition and then applying that knowledge. Knowledge is only power if you use it.
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