I have a love/hate relationship when it comes to traveling. On one side I feel like traveling is a significant part of life: the cultural expansion, new scenery, different perspectives of other lives, etc. On the flip side the side is the physical part of traveling and that means airports. Meh! Airplanes with uncomfortably close seating, a plethora of germ-y airspace shared with hundreds of people (and you know they never wipe anything down) and crappy non-real food.
Don't get me wrong I will take any excuse to go on a vacay, but there is so much prep before and after a trip so that my guts don't got into super-mad-mode, which means erratic pooping, dark circles under my eyes and subsequent irritability. Typically the three days before I leave for a trip I will do a juice cleanse and then the first three days home I will do a juice cleanse. It is so hard to control how, what and when you eat when you travel that, although I try to be nice to my body, it is inevitable that my system is knocked off kilter. I figure by giving it a break before and after the unusual consumptions of a trip, I can help ease the stress travel puts on my body, just a bit.
If you are a whole-food-eating, vegetarian, gluten and lactose free, as clean as possible eating person, airports are the death star and they expect you to die. The best you can hope for is a paltry salad of iceberg lettuce and some very sad looking, machine cut veggie-ish looking vegetables, that probably have no nutritional value left; with some creamy, dairy-based dressing and some croutons (again with the f-ing croutons!). In recent years, some airports have made attempts. There is the occasional Freshie Fresh or other fresh-sounding stands that sell rock hard unripe fruits (non-organic mind you), trail mix (non-gf mind you), nuts, and some pre-cut veg or fruit cups. On the rare occasion in larger hubs you are lucky to find some accommodating places. I think last time I was in San Diego, there was a venue that sold fresh food, like unique chopped salads not in creamy dressings, with nuts and seeds, a kale salad (yay, trendy veggies), but then again I was in CA. CA is always progressive in their food options.
Airport food, I get it, is about convenience, and convenience often comes in the form of meat between two slabs of gluten.
Options for those of us who eat "alternative" are sad at best.
A little aside: Since when did eating whole, real, unprocessed foods become the alternative way of eating? Didn't we evolve from hunter-gatherers, eating berries and greens foraged in nature. Eating something mass produced, packaged, filled with chemicals to make it shelf stable for eons and processed is the alternative way of eating. Since when did a Neanderthal pick a Twinkie off a bush?
Moving on.....
On the rare occasion you find something reasonable in an airport, you are most likely looking at, some sad fruit, overly sugared yogurt, overly salted nuts and a sad salad that basically is water and pesticides. Oh an don't even get me started on drink options. Water is ungodly expensive at $3 for a small plastic bottle of water, that takes two sips to finish. People have no idea how much water I drink! And airplanes are always so drying. (And yes, I am totally that person asking to get by to pee multiple times on a flight. P.S. you don't want to sit next to me).
Knowing options are limited in airports, I pack all my food with me, along with an empty BPA-free water bottle to fill up once I'm through security. My most recent trip I noticed some airports encouraging bringing your own water bottles. Some airports now have water bottle filling apparatus as part of the drinking fountains. Nice. (Although I do wonder how filtered it is...) My philosophy with air travel is eat less, be hungry. Another joyful side effect of flying for me is gas. I think it is the stagnation and constant sitting for long periods of times. My guts don't like the forced stillness and with that comes gas, so the less I eat the less gas I have. I typically pack cut fruits and veggies, raw organic almonds, carob chunks, hard boiled eggs, gf raisin bread with organic nut butter, things that are easy to pack and easy to eat. I would give anything to take some plain yogurt with me, but unfortunately that is too liquid-y for TSA, but couldn't airport food stands offer plain, organic yogurt cups alongside the other sugar, dye laden goo.
I wish there were options for people of like mind and lifestyle to me. Traveling is stressful for everyone, there are a lot of people in very tight quarters so having and feeding a healthy immune system is crucial. Wouldn't it be great if all airports had organic juice bars with fresh pressed juices, wheatgrass, real smoothies, not just sugar, with flax, spirulina, sunflower seeds, Omegas, liquid minerals, etc. as ingredients; where salads were made of real, bitter, immune boosting chlorophyll-filled greens with seeds and nuts, ie real "health food"? Oh how I wish.
I don't even bother looking anymore because there is never a choice for me. I understand they try with Jamba Juice smoothie-ish type smoothies and salads stations, but really the only thing I look forward to when I'm in an airport is my rarely-only-consumed-when-traveling soy latte from Starbucks, but even then, why can't they offer almond milk?
So while I am always really excited to travel and experience the world, I am always reminded oh right I have to go through the death star of starvation, dehydration, germs and excessive gas to get to the other side.
Yay, bon voyage!
