Keep Your Kids Healthy While Traveling
By Gia de Picciotto
Summertime typically means holidays, vacations, and outdoor fun and fitness, but it also means lots of traveling!
While it can be easy to slip up on your health goals for your family due to the convenience of sugar loaded grab-and-go snacks, I want to help you stay focused to keep you and your kids healthy while you’re on the road.
Before my family and I hit the road for a vacation, I spend time planning ahead to ensure we are loaded with nutrients before we get aboard a long (or even short) haul flight. And yes, that means I do carry a bag of my own food on board, even when traveling to the US from the UK!
I am always consciously filling out my customs declaration form because I AM bringing fruit, vegetables and seeds into the country and I am proud of it!
No matter how you plan to travel, here are my simple tips to help keep your kids healthy during the journey (and whatever you do, don’t eat fast food!):
Plan ahead.
Seems to be my mantra lately but kids require organization and the better you plan, the easier your trip will be. Promise!
- Make sure to eat a nourishing meal before the journey by loading up on fruit and veggies to keep your immune system boosted before flying. In our house, it’s a pre-flight Mean Green Juice for the entire family!
- Pack an in-flight/ in –car meal. Our staple is almond butter sandwiches on gluten-free or rye bread with a green apple, carrot, celery and red pepper sticks — all prepped the night before we head out.
Snack smart.
I don’t leave home without healthy munchies as inevitably a travel day becomes a snack day for kids. Rather than load up on the junk food at your fingertips, I carry a bag full of the following to avoid melt downs when the kids see bags of chips and candy on board or roadside.
- Homemade granola bars packed with oats, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and chia.
- A handful of whole dates to give them something sweet.
- Gluten-free porridge instant packets — these are a perfect substitute for a meal or a snack as you only need to ask for a cup of hot water.
- Homemade trail mix — I always pack a combo of pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, chopped fig, desiccated (dried) coconut, raw almonds and raw cashews. Yum!
What are you tips and tricks that keep your family healthy on the road?