Healthier Eats on the Go: Travel Smart, Spend Less

This episode covers tips and tricks for saving money on your food budget while traveling.

Resource: 

Morefood.org 

Transcript

Lindsey Edwards: 0:01

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Extension Connection Podcast where we connect our listeners to research-based resources to help them live better lives. I'm Lindsay Edwards, your family and consumer science agent for Polk County, and I'm here today to talk to you about traveling. And how you can reduce some cost, save time, and eat healthier while on a trip or vacation. So traveling itself is a large expense and food can be a huge part of that. So for my family, I know when we are traveling, one of the ways that we like to save money while we travel is. To bring a lot of the food that we're going to eat while we are traveling, and then also while we are at our destination. And I know some of these things are not gonna be for everyone. Some people wanna eat out every single meal while on vacation, but I'm gonna give you some tips and tricks and different ways that you can save a little bit of money and see if it's something that you can incorporate into your life now. One, the first thing I wanna talk to you about is the actual traveling part itself. So my family often does a lot of road trips, and so I'm gonna go from that standpoint, but if you are flying, you can still incorporate some of the concepts. You just might not be able to do it in a large amount. You just have to be careful if there's liquids or anything like that. But you are allowed to bring food usually through TSA, according to my research. Again, I'm gonna talk about this from like a road trip standpoint. My family prefers to travel this way when we're visiting new places, we have kids, so oftentimes we have to bring a lot more stuff. And so driving tends to be usually cheaper for us because we wouldn't have to pay for multiple bags on a flight. And also the cool thing about driving is it gives you the opportunity to visit places that you wouldn't have visited if you are flying. So one of the ways that I save money. When we're going on road trips is I pack our snacks and usually our lunch, if we are traveling during the day and not in the middle of the night. I pack a cooler. We bought this cooler that actually sits in the middle seat, so it's in between my two children and I will load that full of all kinds of snacks that they can grab or we can grab and eat on our way. I try to push for as healthy as I possibly can, especially starting off my trip. So I'm gonna pack things like apples and oranges and carrot sticks and celery sticks and cucumbers. But I'll also pack things like crackers or fruit snacks for my kids. If I can find those or have those at my house, I'm not gonna go out and buy anything. I'm usually just packing snacks that I already have at my house to save money. I'm trying to push them to eat as much nutrient-dense foods as we can. When we start off traveling, it'll boost your immune system. and it just starts us all out on a great Foot. The other thing I do is I also pack things like sandwiches or lunch foods that we can eat as we travel, so we're not having to make a separate stop to eat lunch. And oftentimes if you pack it yourself and it. Is good quality, healthy food, you're going to be getting a healthier option than you would if you're eating out of like a vending machine at a. rest station or a fast food restaurant. One of the best things that I've done in at our past vacation was that I actually, the night before, cooked a pizza and stuck it in the fridge, and then my husband the next day had cold pizza instead of a sandwich, which he thought was like the best thing ever. So that's always an option. Just make sure anytime you're bringing perishable foods, that you are keeping it in a cooler. With cooler packs, so it's staying colder than 41 degrees. So you still wanna make sure you're not gonna make yourself sick and you're following food safety guidelines By doing that. I know that people, not all people, I. Like to cook while they go on vacation. But packing just your snacks can save you quite a bit of money on gas station stops most smaller convenience stores have their items priced much higher than you would get at like a regular grocery store. So just picking up some of the staples maybe that you would even get from a convenience store before you leave at your next grocery shopping trip would save you some money. Along the way. Now again, if you're flying, just think twice about packing some snacks, because on average inside of an airport, food is 10% higher than the exact same product would be outside. Maybe throw a couple granola bars in your bag or something that you can snack on so you're not having to spend all your money at the airport. I also think that in our homes, in our pantries, in our fridge, in our freezer, we already have a lot of things that we could use to repurpose, to make nutritious snacks. For example, if you have oatmeal, you could throw together a quick granola or granola bars to bring along. Popcorn is a great option. Most people have that in their pantry. Pop a couple bags, stick it in baggies, and it's a great salty snack instead of opting for a bag of chips at the gas station. The other thing I like to do when traveling is whenever we get to our destination, and this could be flying or driving or anything, is to just go to the grocery store and maybe replenish some of those snacks. Especially if you are flying and didn't have the extra room. Go to the grocery store, buy your regular snacks if you're staying at a place or breakfast is not included, maybe grabbing a couple breakfast items just so you're not having to go out for every single meal. we prefer not to really have a sit down and eat every single meal when we travel, especially if it's someplace we've never been because we like to go exploring and we don't like, or we don't want to have to stop. Whenever those three meals hit, so we'll grab things, or I'll bring them things like granola bars or even you can buy little instant oatmeal and keep that, or you can buy some muffins and keep those in your room. really the options are endless for breakfast, but that's just a great way to save you money is getting that at the grocery store rather than going out to eat. You can buy. A four pack of bakery muffins from the grocery store for the price that you could probably buy one muffin in the bakery. So it's gonna save you money that way. a list of snacks at. I've kind of said a few of them, but things that we usually keep while traveling are things like apples, oranges, bananas. Those are shelf stable. You don't have to worry about refrigerating them. Baby carrots or celery or cucumbers. You will have to refrigerate those. But it's a good snack and sometimes we'll get like a tub of hummus and. The kids will just snack on that. I like to, if I have time, make a batch of like muffins or banana bread that we can take with us, because not only is it healthy and filling if you make it healthy and filling, but sometimes at nighttime if you want a sweet treat, those are really good options to have in your room. So another reason. Which I haven't talked about yet. Why I like to pack a lot of my own food is because my family does have some eating restrictions, so I don't eat gluten or dairy. My daughter doesn't eat dairy, so when I pack my own snacks, I for sure know that I have something to eat. So it is. A comfort level for us as well, knowing that if we have our own food, then we don't have to worry that whatever restaurant we go to will have to accommodate our eating patterns. Now, if you wanna really do a deep dive into how to save a lot of money while traveling on food, you can go to the idea of cooking your own meals. We as a family have saved hundreds of dollars, if not thousands of dollars over the years, doing some of our own cooking on vacation or doing meal prep before and reheating our meals there. And I understand that this concept is not for everyone. A lot of families. Budget in food into their travel expenses, and they want to eat out for every meal. And if that's you, that's totally fine. for me and my family, we just rather spend our money on experiences than the food itself. And don't get me wrong when I say this, we do eat out when we go on vacation, but we're just not eating out every night because part of traveling is trying the cuisine of wherever you are. So I encourage you to still do that and still go out but instead of going out seven nights, you're going out two to three nights and you're still saving that money by those extra nights that you're not. Spending all that extra money I did some research and according to forbes.com, if you're just doing takeout, you are gonna spend five times the amount that you would, if you were to cook at home. There was also a chart that showed, basically. What a serving of cooking at home costs, which was$4 and 31 cents versus what it would cost you to get the exact same thing at a restaurant. And they surveyed, I think it was like 86 different restaurants in this chart. And like I said, 4 31 to cook it at home, if you go out to eat, it's gonna cost you$20 and 37 cents per serving. So there's a huge savings if you're cooking some of your own food. Now, there's a couple factors that go into this. Whether or not you actually can cook your own food, for example, are you staying in a hotel room and does it have a microwave? Does it have a refrigerator? Does it have a small kitchen? Are you allowed to bring in appliance? It usually says that on the website, whether you are or not allowed to have them. And what I mean by small appliances, like an instant pot or a crock pot, or a rice cooker. Some resorts ban these things and you can actually be kicked out of your hotel room if you bring them. So please look into that ahead of time. Do you have access to the grocery store? Do you have a way to get there? if I'm driving, do I have room in my vehicle to pack the extra food or equipment that I might need? And then the most important one really in my opinion is do I have the time and energy to one, plan out my meals and pre-cook ahead of time? And two cook while I'm on vacation. So just take all of these things into consideration when you're planning out what you wanna do with food. So let's just say in a perfect world, you are at like an Airbnb with a full kitchen and you can cook your own food. What I usually like to do when I'm planning out my food to save money on vacation is if I'm on vacation for seven days, I'm planning four to five dinner meals. With two to three nights out that way. I'm getting a break from cooking as well as utilizing these cost saving techniques. So the other thing I like to do is I like to pre-prep or pre-cook things so that I'm not really having to be in the kitchen all that much. So things like crock pot, dump and go meals. Maybe I make a few of those and freeze them. And bring'em in a cooler and then stick'em in the freezer when I get there and I have my crockpot and I just dump'em in the crockpot in the morning and they're done in the evening. Pre-made frozen casserole, lasagna, You could cook ahead of time, freeze it, and then just have to heat it up in your Airbnb. So that's a really good option. I've even done things like barbecue, I've made. Barbecue and maybe froze part of it, and then just sat it in the slow cooker that morning and that evening we had barbecue for sandwiches. So really. There's so many different things you could do or make to save you time. Yes, you can make everything from scratch on vacation, but I don't want to,'cause it's my vacation too. So part of what I do is I do the work ahead of time and then I'm not having to cook the whole time I'm there. And then I also know that my family is getting healthy, nutritious food and meals while we're on vacation because. Sometimes, depending on where you're eating, that's not always the case. Now, if you're in a hotel and you can't have appliances and all you have is a microwave, this is gonna take a little more planning if you really wanna do this. but again, something like barbecue, instead of using the crockpot, you could reheat it in the microwave. We've done microwave quesadillas with canned chicken and canned salsa and cheese. And heated those up in the microwave just to melt the cheese really.'cause everything else is shell stable. You can also do things like make eggs in the microwave. You could do omelets and have pre-cooked pancakes and waffles and just reheat those. Again, there's many options. They sell frozen vegetables and bags that you can heat in the microwave. So those are all really easy things that you could do. Just to save your family money and provide nutritious meals. I mean, I could talk about this subject all day, but I will leave you with the resource that you can do your own research if you would like. it's called More food.org and it's so the More in My Basket program, which is a Snap education program that NC State has, and it's a great resource. I actually got some ideas off of there for. This podcast, they have articles that, talk about like saving money while you travel, or recipes that you can cook in the microwave. They also have no cook meal options on their website, so I would encourage you to go visit that website and see what they have. on there. Again, thank you for spending some time with me today. I enjoy talking about this topic. If you have any questions or need ideas, please contact me. Again, my name is Lindsay Edwards and I am in your Polk County office. we will talk to you next time.