To better enjoy your road trip and to have enough energy once you stop for activities or attractions bringing a good selection of snacks is essential. You do of course have the possibility of stopping at gas stations or fast food restaurants along the way to get the energy you need, but this is often both expensive and unhealthy. This article will give you some ideas for road trip snacks to bring with you to avoid those gas stations and fast food places.
Many of the snacks listed below require you to bring a cooler to ensure that they are fresh when you want to enjoy them. To keep the food cool one tip is to freeze bottled water or juice (Remove some of the water/ Juice before freezing), as this will also ensure that you always have a refreshing drink at hand. You can also bring frozen grapes and smoothies and make your sandwiches using bread that is frozen. In addition to the cooler and frozen food, napkins or wipes as well as plastic knives, forks, spoons and mugs often come in handy.
Drinks
As already mentioned bringing frozen drinks, such as bottled water or juice is a great way of keeping the rest of your food cool while ensuring that you always have refreshing drinks. For juices, a recommendation is to bring fruit juice boxes or mini cans.
Sodas should not be frozen, but should instead be properly chilled and transported together with the frozen water in a cooler. Today many cars have the possibility of cooling drinks in their cup holders, but this is usually only suitable for shorter road trips as a single bottle will not get you very long.
Healthy Road Trip Snacks
If eating healthy during your road trip is what you are looking for there are plenty of options. This section is divided into snacks based on nuts, fruit, vegetables, and sandwiches.
Nuts provide you with plenty of long-lasting energy and combined with dried fruits they make up both healthy and tasty snack. You can make small portion bags with homemade mixes, maybe one for each of the passengers. This makes it easy to enjoy your snack while driving without creating any mess but do remember that if you bring salted nuts, wet wipes are very useful. Try different combinations of almonds, walnuts, peanuts and dried raisins, pineapples, pecans, mango, pears and apricots. Combinations of sweet and salty usually make a good mix.
Fresh fruit such as apples, oranges, grapes, and bananas make up a great snack, but don’t forget to put them (Except the bananas) in your cooler. Also, summer berries are great, try mixing blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. But enjoy them outside the car as berries easily become a bit messy.
Baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, and sliced vegetables are snack options that typically do not require a cooler, which makes them convenient to bring if you either want to avoid bringing the cooler or if it is already full of other snacks and drinks. Depending on your trip destination and route you might be lucky enough to find roadside fruit and vegetable stands if this is the case you should definitely make a stop to get your snacks as fresh as possible.
To make healthy sandwiches try a multigrain or whole wheat bread with minimum amounts of sugar, add low-fat toppings such as turkey, chicken or light cream cheese. You can also either add dry vegetables to your sandwiches or combine them with a fruit salad or some yogurt.
Less Healthy Road Trip Snacks
If you are not very fond of the above-mentioned snacks, or if you want to bring something more in addition to the above there are tons of options. Below you can find some ideas, and in addition to these, you can, of course, find plenty of bars, crisps, and candy at your local grocery store.
Bringing a dip such as thousand islands, peanut butter, cream cheese or maybe a homemade combination of honey and cinnamon for your fruits and vegetables will make both the kids and yourself happy. Peanut butter or peanut butter and jam sandwiches are also highly recommended. When picking up your bag of chips, all options are actually not as un-healthier as you might think. Typically baked, or even popped, crisps will be healthier than the ordinary fried ones.
The same goes for cookies, if you, for instance, go for one with a lot of fiber based on oatmeal or containing nuts and dried fruit, it will not only be healthier but will also keep you going longer than ordinary cookies. Chocolate bars are great but be careful when eating them to avoid stains on our car seats, and don’t forget the wet wipes to ensure that you can quickly remove any stains that you do make.
Hopefully, this could give you some insight into what you can do to mitigate hunger while on the road, have a safe trip and if you have any trouble, don’t doubt contacting us!
