“Those who think they have no time for healthy eating, will sooner or later have to find time for illness.”
– Edward Stanley
What to eat before traveling is another simple question, but one with a lot of potential bad answers. If you’re in an airplane, you won’t feel too comfortable if what you ate before boarding was cabbage, baked beans or any other food that produces gases. Their effects aren’t really that
pleasant on land, but they gets worse at altitude because air expands in your stomach and digestive tract up to 30 per cent. And it gets worse if you had a carbonated drink to go with that food.
What you want to eat when traveling, whether by plane or by car, is a low-calorie food that travels well. You’ll be sitting for hours so you won’t need a lot of calories. Also, the immobility of sitting in a train (or plane, coach or car) for more than four hours slows down the blood flow making it more prone to clotting.
What to eat before traveling
Since you’ll be stuck in a seat for a while, you may not be able to keep foods fresh, so nonperishable foods are a good starting place if you are going to eat on the road. If you are flying, avoid eating right before taking off, because it is harder to digest food when flying. It is also a good idea to carry some herbal teas (for both car and plane trips). Camomile helps to relieve stress and anxiety and also helps you to relax, ginger is good for circulation and peppermint can help trapped gas.
To make things easier to read, here is a list of recommended foods for travel:
- Fruit juices which have high levels of polyphenols. Jeya Henry, professor of nutrition at Oxford Brookes University says that the “supernutrients found in cranberry, pomegranate and cloudy apples juice help reduce risk of blood clots while the fluid in them improves hydration.”
- Fish. It is rich in beneficial oils that help to reduce the tendency for blood to clot. Salmon is a good option.
- Reduced-fat hummus with some pita bread (if you eat it within a few hours of boarding, you will be safe). Hummus is rich in sesame seeds and chickpeas, the former being a source of good oils and the latter rich in soluble fibers which help to lower blood cholesterol.
- Drink plenty of water. It will keep your body active by regularly have to go to the toilet (if you’re on a plane), you will be well hydrated and have thinner blood.
- Eat grapes and crudities such as carrot and celery sticks. They also give you extra water.
- Eat yogurts.
- Have a protein bar with about 15 grams of protein if you are going on a short flight.
- Prepare a trail mix made with whole-grain cereal, nuts, and dried fruit if you are going on a long road trip.
And of course there are some things to avoid while traveling:
- Don’t drink alcohol. It has been demonstrated that one alcoholic drink in the air has the effect of two on the ground, and while initially it can promote sleep, within several hours of consumption it can cause insomnia and dehydration. (source: Aviation Health)
- Don’t eat a diet high in fat in general day-to-day life.
- Don’t eat foods that produce intestinal gases. Onions, cauliflower, cabbage and pulses like baked beans are the main offenders of the category.
- Don’t drink carbonated drinks, they also cause bloating.
- Avoid pastries such as croissants, Danish pastries and muffins which have a good 10g of saturated fat each. Saturated fats raise the levels of blood fats after eating which activates a substance called Factor 7, a central component of the blood-clotting mechanism.
talented photographer: Konstantin Sutyagin
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