Seven Secrets for Healthy Travels

Two of our greatest joys in life are exploring new places and eating the local foods we find along the way.  As nutritionists who write about our love of travel and food, we often get the question, “How do you stay fit while travelling?”  It’s all about balance.  Here are our top tips for staying well-nourished and healthy on the road. 

1.  Pack a Snack Bag

Planning ahead is one of the keys to eating well on the road.  Whether you’re piling into the car for a road trip or hopping a plane to an exotic destination, please don’t rely on fast food joints or airport menus to keep you nourished.  Invest in a compact, insulated lunch bag fitted with re-usable containers and fill them your favorite pack-and-go foods.  Think about easy-to-eat foods that keep well, like whole grain crackers and individual packets of nut butter, sliced hard cheeses, whole or cut fruit, granola or trail mix, and cut vegetables.  Even foods like kale salad, marinated beets or quinoa salads are great.  Tuck an ice pack into the snack bag for longer trips. 

2.  Stay Hydrated  

While you’re packing your snack bag, don’t forget your water bottle.  It’s easy to forget about—or even avoid—drinking liquids when you’re traveling.  Who wants to stop at the rest stop every hour? Drinking liquids is important while traveling, because it’s easy to become dehydrated.  And when you are dehydrated, you’re likely to feel fatigued—not a good way to spend your travels.  

 Water is the easiest—and cheapest—choice for hydration.  Just bring along your favorite water bottle and keep refilling it every chance you get.  If you get tired of plain water, try sparkling water with a little fruit juice, coconut water or kombucha.  Just avoid the sodas—including diet sodas—as much as possible.   

3.  Don’t Skip Meals

Skipping meals always backfires.  You think you’re “saving up” for a great dinner, and then you overeat—usually beginning with the bread basket—because you’re famished.  Try to eat small, regularly-spaced meals and snacks throughout the day, ideally every three to five hours.  Your snack bag will help with this. 

Eating regularly has a few major benefits.  First, eating frequently keeps your metabolism running at a speedy, steady pace, giving you plenty of energy to make it to the eighteenth hole, visit that last little boutique around the corner, or avoid the crowds and take the stairs to the top of the Eiffel Tower.  Second, enjoying regularly-spaced meals and snacks prevents brain fog, or worse—irritability and grumpiness—that can quickly turn a perfect day sour.  Lastly, eating more frequently means you get to try more local foods.  And speaking of local foods….

alligator fritters, at Cochon in New Orleans

4.  Be Adventurous.  Eat Local.

When you’re traveling, try something new! Don’t waste a meal on something you can eat at home. Try the roasted goat shakshuka or the alligator fritters. Antelope? Yes, please. 

When we’re traveling to new locations, we have a few ways to find the best local spots.  First, we always try to visit the local Farmers Market.  The growers and vendors give great recommendations for restaurants in town featuring locally grown and produced foods.  Second, peruse your favorite magazines, newspapers or blogs to see if they’ve written about restaurants in the city you’re visiting.  The New York Times has a great series called ’36 hours in…’ featuring interesting restaurants and activities.  Last, just walk around! Some of our favorite food finds came from accidently stumbling upon a place.       

    

sharing plates at Gjelina, in Los Angeles

5.  Share.

While we love to eat, we exercise portion control. Our rule of thumb—order one appetizer and one entrée or four small plate items per two people. It’s always enough food.  And the more people you have at the table, the more food you get to taste.  Yes, you should have dessert.  Just not after every meal, or perhaps even every day.  And no hogging the chocolate creme brulee—the sharing rule applies to desserts as well.

6.  Stop when you’re full.

Listen to your hunger cues. Hopefully, you’ve taken our advice and snacked throughout the day and are ending your day with a delicious dinner.  Eat slowly, reminisce about your day, relish in the food you’re sharing with those you love.  Pay attention to when you begin to feel full. Your body will thank you. And even better, you’ll feel like eating breakfast the next morning.

exploring Monterey on foot

7.  Explore on Foot

We love to explore a city or region on foot. Whether it’s pounding the concrete in New York City, walking the boardwalkin Monterey or exploring the trails in Tennessee, walking is the best way to see and experience a place. Even more, it’s good for your heart, your body—and your soul.

This story appears in the August/September issue of Bellingham Alive.

Plant Power!

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, it’s recommended that we consume between 1 ½ to 2 cups of fruits daily and 2 ½ to 3 cups of vegetables daily, with slight variations depending on gender and age. With that being said, we’re not ones for dwelling on numbers when it comes to food. People often tend to get hung up on a food’s nutrition content – things like sugar, fat, and fiber grams. We’ve noticed that when you focus on eating real food – unprocessed, unpackaged food – food you can picture growing in nature, the nutrition often takes care of itself.

This is why we love the new Plate Model from theUSDA. It simply encourages individuals to make half your plate fruits and vegetables. And since there is such a bounty of in-season produce available in California during the summer months, eating your recommended servings is not nearly as daunting as it often seems during the winter time.

You’d be hard pressed to find a dietitian or nutritionist that doesn’t advocate eating your fruits and veggies. Hundreds of scientific studies have led to the conclusion that the healthiest diet on the planet is a plant-based one. A fellow Registered Dietitian, Sharon Palmer released a book earlier this summer titled The PlantPowered Diet where she explains the dramatic benefits of eating more plants, such as these in-season items:    

melon, nectarines, peaches, plums, and tomatoes.

Tomatoes, for example are nature’s sunscreen. The lycopene in tomatoes—a potent antioxidant—may help prevent sunburn, reducing the aging skin damage from the sun. In addition, antioxidant-rich tomatoes help your skin retain moisture, keeping your skin healthy during the long, dry days of winter and the sun-drenched days of summer.

 

Melons are relatively low in calories, and are delicious in both sweet and savory recipes. Most melon varieties are rich in vitamins A and C, which are essential beauty-boosting nutrients. Vitamins A and C help keep your hair shiny and healthy by helping your hair follicles produce sebum, the body’s natural hair conditioner. Vitamin C is an essential building block of collagen, which helps to keep our skin supple and elastic. A breakdown in collagen causes the skin to wrinkle.

Image reprinted with permission from www.yumsugar.com and www.healthyaperature.com

Quinoa, while not necessarily an in-season fruit or vegetable, is a plant-lovers dream food. It’s one of the only plant based sources of protein that contains all the body’s essential amino acids. Since it’s packed with both protein and fiber, it’s guaranteed to keep you satisfied until your next meal or snack. Not to mention, since quinoa cooks like a grain it pairs perfectly with a variety of fruits, vegetables, and seasonings. The result is often delicious full-meal salads or side dishes.

Image reprinted with permission from www.foodiefiasco.com and www.healthaperature.com

 

By enjoying fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, good-quality proteins and healthy fats in reasonable portions, it allows you to leave the calculator where it belongs – in your desk and not at the dinner table.
 

If you're looking for ways to increase your plant intake, we highly recommend The Plant Powered Diet for it's essential information on the healthiest plant foods and for it's 75 original (and delicious!) plant-based recipes...

...such as this plant-inspired recipe from Sharon’s book below.

 

Southwestern Black Bean, Quinoa, and Mango Salad

Image from www.sharonpalmer.com

The jewel-like black beans shine in this crunchy, zesty salad. Serve it with corn tortillas and vegetable soup for an easy, refreshing meal.

You can watch Sharon prepare this recipe here.

Makes 6 servings (about 1 cup each)

1 – 15 oz can black beans, no salt added, rinsed, drained
1 cup cooked quinoa (according to package directions)
1 cup frozen corn
1 small red bell pepper, chopped
1 cup chopped fresh mango
¼ cup chopped red onion
½ cup fresh cilantro, chopped (or 2 tsp dried if not available)
1 small fresh jalepeno pepper, seeded, finely diced
1 lemon, juiced
1 1/2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ tsp cumin
½ tsp chili powder
¼ tsp turmeric

Mix beans, quinoa, corn, pepper, mango, onion, cilantro and jalapeno together in a mixing bowl.

In a small bowl, whisk lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, cumin, chili powder and turmeric together. Toss into salad mixture and chill until serving time.

Recipe from The Plant-Powered Diet: The Lifelong Eating Plan for Achieving Optimal Health, Beginning Today, copyright © Sharon Palmer, 2012. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, The Experiment. Available June 2012.

www.sharonpalmer.com

These seasonal tips & recipe were featured in last month’s

Health & Family Guide for The Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

For more “In Season” tips & recipes, pick up the next issue of

The Health & Family Guide on September 21^st.  

In Love with the Food of Israel

I’m completely in love with the food of Israel.

What’s not to love about a culture that eats salad for breakfast?  Happily and with gusto, I might add.  It’s a nutritionist’s dream—a country with abundantly available fresh, simply prepared local and seasonal foods.  Good food—food that tastes good and is good for you—is the standard, not the exception. 

Because Israel imports very little food from its neighbors, Israelis truly eat seasonal and locally-grown and produced foods as a rule and a necessity.  Food is reasonably priced, meaning healthy, fresh food is affordable for everyone.  And street food—or fast food—can be healthy, real food, like a freshly blended watermelon juice in summer, pomegranate juice in the fall, or a small bag of nuts or olives from the stands found in every street market.  But perhaps most importantly, there is a spirit of hospitality that pervades the country, where people meet and gather over lengthy meals, spending time together and connecting with each other as they nourish their bodies. 

They’re doing it right.

Here are some recommendations on what and where to eat when you visit Israel.  And you should.

We might as well start at the beginning—with breakfast.  Israelis know how to start their day right—standard fare might be eggs with chopped vegetable salad paired with fresh cheeses and olives, or my favorite—shakshuka, a tomato stew with eggs poached in the sauce.  I ordered it off of every menu.

In Tel Aviv, visit the LovEat cafes for the classic Israeli breakfast, including organic, shade-grown coffee and freshly squeezed juice for only 49 sheqels, which is about $12 US.

breakfast at LovEat



Café Sheleg is a must for good music, great breakfast and a hipster vibe.  At Sonia, sit in the lovely outdoor garden and order shakshuka, served with hearty homemade Moroccan bread.  Or, if you’re feeling chic, head to Hotel Montefiore to dine with beautiful people in the Casablanca-inspired dining room.  Their Tunisian Eggs—a riff on shakshuka—is deeply savory and soul-satisfying. 

breakfast at Cafe Sheleg

the garden courtyard at Sonia

Tunesian Eggs

Did I mention the coffee in Israel is very, very good?  And the café culture is prominent.  More people meet over coffee than cocktails.



Speaking of cocktails, Israel nurtures a burgeoning wine industry.  Definitely sample wines from artisan vineyards including Golan Heights Winery, Pelter and the boutique Galileo (my personal favorite).

If you’re a wine—and food!—lover, escape to the Upper Galilee to visit Pausa Inn.  Owners Einat and Avigdor helped launch the Slow Food movement in northern Israel, and their farm and food reflects their passion. They will feed you (very) well, with breakfasts and dinners featuring foods harvested from their own garden, including olives (and their own incredible, buttery olive oil) and pickled kiwis, and from neighboring farms and vineyards. Einat and Avigdor will also introduce you to outstanding local wines, entertain you with stories of life close to the Lebanese border and encourage you to slow down and relax on the farm.  It’s a lovely place.

breakfast at Pausa

relaxing in the vineyard

first course, fresh from the farm

 While you’re visiting Pausa, have lunch at Focaccia in neighboring She’ar Yeshuv, where we found our favorite eggplant dish—fire roasted eggplant so creamy, it smears on bread like butter.  Served on a bed of lemon-spiked tahini and the best olive oil, it’s crazy good. 

charred eggplant, at Focaccia

Eggplant makes a starring role in Israeli cuisine, as does hummus—the dip of chickpeas, tahini and lemon is a ubiquitous presence in every Israeli home and on most menus.  But the best hummus in Israel can be found deep inside the maze of the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, at the small, family-owned hummus place.  Walk through Jaffa gate and straight down the Muslim Quarter entrance.  Turn left at the end and it's right there. It has no name.  Swimming in olive oil and topped with herbs and stewed chickpeas, it’s worth getting lost for. 

hummus at Abu Shukri

Hummus is a great example of the delicious, fast and affordable real food options available all over the country.  There are plenty of falafel and shawarma to be found, and half a pita filled with chickpea fritters or sliced lamb accompanied with fresh vegetables, tahini and yogurt can make a fast, satisfying and delicious lunch.

Vanessa's falafel

Snacks most often include fresh or dried fruit, nuts and olives.  To stock up and take some home (which you will want to do!) head to one of the Shuks, or outdoor markets.  Here are some of the ones you shouldn’t miss.

In Jerusalem, shop at the Shuk Mahane Yehuda, where the halva (a sweetened sesame seed paste) from Halva King and flaky burekas (savory pastries filled with cheese, potatoes or spinach) from Marzipan are a must. 

halva

buying burekas

If tasting from the vendors doesn’t satisfy your cravings, have breakfast or lunch at Cafe Mizrachi, which serves gorgeous salads and a very good shakshuka.

shakshuka at Cafe Mizrachi

In Tel Aviv, visit the Shuk Ha'Carmel, a loud and boisterous marketplace selling everything from olives and watermelon to sunglasses and the omnipresent Dead Sea lotion.  Or, head to the port marketplace at the Namal and explore the postcard-perfect shops.

buying halva and pistachios, at the Namal

You can stroll down the streets of Florentin neighborhood and sample the spices, olives, and cheeses at the stands lining the streets.

Or get adventurous and visit Shuk HaTikva, in one of Tel Aviv’s working class neighborhoods, settled by immigrants from countries like Yemen, Iraq, Ethiopia and Russia.  Shopping here proves fresh fruits and vegetables are not elitist. 

watermelon, in season

Iraqi mango sauce

While you’re there, have lunch at the Yemenite diner at the entrance.  Try traditional jahmoun served with tomato puree and a hardboiled egg—or shakshuka, of course, served with flatbread topped with za’atar.  All made more delicious with zhug, a spicy herb sauce.   

shakshuka, with zhug

Here are a few other restaurant recommendations, to help you narrow down your must-taste wish list during your Israeli travels.

Jerusalem

No trip to Jerusalem is complete without a meal at Machneyuda, which gets its name (and much of its ingredients) from the Mahane Yehuda market.  Meals here are fanciful, lively affairs complete with loud music and dancing between tables.  Order the tasting menu and enjoy the scene—Elie and I did.

dancing chefs, at Machneyuda

first of a dozen (or so....) courses

happy



Tel Aviv

Delicatessen 79/81 is the perfect spot for breakfast or lunch—or to stop and pick up picnic provisions to go. Their ready-to-eat counter features amazing flatbreads and a variety of salads perfect for the beach.  Be sure to sample their olive and cheese bread stick (delicious!) or one of their sweet treats.

cheese and cured meat selection, at Delicatessen

picnic on the beach, with flatbread & salads from Delicatessen

For dinner, the list of great restaurants is endless, but this will get you started.  If you’re in the mood for handcrafted pasta or pizzas made from seasonal, local ingredients, meet friends and share plates at Ronimotti.



tomato bruschetta, at Ronimotti



For modern and creative Israeli cuisine, visit HaShulchan on Rothschild Avenue. Sit outside on the patio, have a cocktail and enjoy the Tel Aviv scene as much as the food (which is lovely).

beet salad, with the incredibly creamy Israeli cheese

If you want to feel like a local, try to find off-the-beaten path Joz ve Loz, where you can sit outside in the courtyard and sample the daily menu, created each day from market-fresh ingredients.  One of the friendly servers will gladly help you translate from Hebrew—there is no English menu available.

seasonal salad at Joz ve Loz

Or, try the elevated seasonal creations from Oasis; the bright green walls surrounding the open kitchen create a happy evironment for dinner with friends.  Or sit outside, but don't let the mosquitos bite.

fresh herb salad with duck, at Oasis

Jaffa (Yaffo)

Jaffa, the ancient port city next to Tel Aviv, is home to the Old Man and the Sea, a ‘fish restaurant’ overlooking the Mediterranean, where each table automatically receives over a dozen small plates containing salads, roasted vegetables, hummus, tahini, avocado and other dips and spreads to eat with baskets of charred flatbread.  It’s heaven.  Go hungry.

selection of salads at the Old Man and the Sea

For some of the best breads and pastries in the city, head to the Margoza Café.  And after shopping in the Shuk Ha Pishpishim, have lunch at Puah.  The eclectic restaurant sits in the middle of the flea market, complete with mismatched tables and chairs sitting outside on Persian carpets.  It’s a great neighborhood gathering spot with good food.

shakshuka at Puah

Finally, when in Tel Aviv and Jaffo, you must seek out the paletas—Latin American fresh-fruit popsicles—created by Elie’s beautiful and talented cousin, Nomi.  Her handcrafted and uniquely-flavored paletas are available at numerous cafes and restaurants around the city.  Try the perfectly portioned and not-too-sweet avocado, halva or lemon and poppy seed yogurt. 

There’s so much more about Israel to talk about—rich history, religious sights, gorgeous landscapes and beaches, politics, nightlife.  You’ll just have to join us next time and see it for yourself.

enjoying gelato at Anita