Seasoned travellers will understand just how easy it is to engage in unhealthy practices. From drinking a lot with friends, to eating deep fried food and other easy, accessible fast food, to laying around all day on a beach, you have to focus if you’re hoping not to fall into unhealthy habits while abroad.
But is this actually the case? It might be that healthy eating abroad means knowing the local culture and leveraging it as appropriate. Of course, it might be more difficult to avoid carbs if you’re roaming around Italy thanks to their incredible (but often quite filling) authentic cuisine, but that’s not to say it can’t be done.
There should be a few priorities to determine what we eat while travelling. First, we should consider how much we’re willing to spend, and how authentic the food is. Second, we should think about how healthy it is for us. Third, we should think about why we’re eating – is it out of boredom while we wait for our transport, or is it because we’ve had a long day of walking around town? This last point can limit overeating. However, while the priorities are essential, they should be focused on together, not as separate entities.
In this post, we’ll discuss how you can continue to eat healthily while abroad:
Simple, Effective Recipes
For this, your accommodation will need an accessible kitchen, but learning to cook delicious, simple and worthwhile meals can help you eat more nutritiously and cheaply when on your travels. You don’t need to make overly complex meals, just make simple recipes pop with care, attention, and wholesome ingredients you can find at most markets. For instance, this wonderful sweet potato chili recipe hits on all of those markets, hitting many of your nutritional needs while also remaining tasty, healthy, and easy to pack as you go about your day.
Simple, effective recipes like this can help you stretch simple ingredients further, as well as helping you save money on the ‘convenience’ of eating in fast food joints. It’s very easy to get carried away with your food budget while abroad, but making use of the amenities in your rented accommodation can help you avoid that kind of bad planning.
Shop Authentic
When you’re abroad, you have the luxury of being able to find many stores and markets that will provide you with worthwhile, authentic food. This beats having to go to a certain culture’s speciality supermarket in your own country, as they may be well-stocked, but getting this right from the source is incredible!
Even freshly baked bread will be better and healthier than purchasing it from a supermarket shelf. It might be that you’ll have the freshest seafood of your life when in a certain location. While seeing how certain cultures cultivate food with little to no preservatives and GMO’s can show you just what is possible out there. That in itself can leave anyone feeling appreciative of a culture, and a great travel experience. Challenging yourself in this way can be fulfilling.
Read Into Local Food Culture
Remaining knowledgeable about a food culture is only possible if you interact with it, and so reading into the history of a local area and what defines it from a food perspective can be wonderful. It can also inspire you to try new recipes.
For instance, it might be that a small task for the morning could involve purchasing a fish from the market, totally fresh, coming back home and attempting to follow a preparation for a recipe to try later that night. It’s very easy to feel at a loss with how to get started and where to begin preparing food if you’re unfamiliar with a culture, and so reading an accessible tour book, such as a traveler’s guide to food in the local area (this is what travel writers and food writers put much of their work into), can be wonderful. Even if this means watching a documentary or the programmes of television personalities like Gordon Ramsay or Rick Stein, you will find some knowledge that you may have been missing and this can inspire you to cook.
Focus On Set Mealtimes
For some, just eating regularly is an achievement in itself when abroad. This is because you can tend to be so busy while out there and exploring that you either forget to eat, or eat too much bad, quick food.
Focusing on set mealtimes allows you to plan for the day, purchase goods in the morning, as well as allowing you to take risks or researching and making reservations at good restaurants that use wholesome, fresh ingredients. As you might expect, this can be stunningly worthwhile for staying healthy abroad.
With this advice, you’re sure to remain healthy and energetic thanks to good eating habits while abroad.
A New Life Wandering 