Flying it: top tips for eating healthily with family on holiday

Top tips for eating healthily while travelling with a young family. Dietician Ellen Roche talks to Caroline Hennessy about how to get the basics right; flying with children; and snacks to bring from home on a road trip

Fri, 21 Jul, 2023 - 02:00

Caroline Hennessy

Going on holidays with your family is a wonderful experience. It can also be a stimulating, invigorating, challenging — and, yes, testing — time, especially when the kids are young. While breaks away with children aren’t necessarily relaxing, that change of location, the opportunity to spend time together making memories, is always, always worth it.

With family scattered all around the world, we’ve been travelling with our girls — now 11 and 14 — since they were two months old, catching ferries to Wales and France, overnight trains in Europe, and long-haul flights to their father’s New Zealand home. We’ve learned a lot, most importantly that food needs to be prioritised. When people get hungry — or the adults miss out on their morning coffee — there may be meltdowns (and that’s just me).

One of the most important things when you’re on the road, travelling by train, boat or plane, is to figure out ways of eating healthily. No one, at any age, wants to come home feeling icky because they’ve eaten a junk food diet for two weeks. Nor do you want pitched battles about food choices at every mealtime.

Ellen Roche, registered dietitian and founder of Nutri Vive Nutrition Consultancy has travelled with her young family, aged two and four, in Italy and Ireland and she believes in starting from the basics: “Good nutrition is crucial to help your children to achieve optimal growth and development and to prevent nutritional deficiencies. Establishing good eating habits at a young age can be continued into teenage years and helps prevent health issues in adulthood.”

With a focus on routine for children while at home — set times for getting up, meals, naps, and bedtime — to make life easier for everyone, it can be confusing when that gets disregarded while on holiday. I still remember our eldest, aged the age of three, on a 10-hour flight, asking plaintively when they were going to be bringing the porridge.

Some kind of schedule is something that Roche considers important: “Routine as much as possible for meals, naps and bedtime whilst on holidays makes life a lot easier while away, but also facilitates readjustment upon the return home.”

If children are used to eating at certain times, try as much as possible to stick to the timetable to prevent hangry-related meltdowns: “Try to keep meal times generally similar but, of course, it’s holiday time so we expect some degree of flexibility to work around holiday activities,” Roche advises.

“I recommend three regular meals and 2-3 snacks per day for children older than 12 months.” She points out that “when a younger child is hungry, time is of the essence and it’s crucial to be well stocked up on the move.”

In a world where everything has changed, familiar healthy snacks can be a lifesaver. “Young children thrive on familiarity,” says Roche, who also recommends that you pack their regular breakfast cereal “just to get started on a positive note.”

As someone who regularly travelled with the girls’ favourite porridge oats in her luggage when they were small, I can confirm that this makes an enormous difference when children wake up on the first morning of the holidays.

Ultimately, a relaxed holiday environment can lead to new and unexpected food encounters. Bring kids to the supermarket and challenge them to find something new for picnics. Order a mixture of safe and unusual dishes at restaurants — and remember that it’s always easier to eat out at lunchtime with small people than in the evening when everyone is tired.

“Young children who are fussy eaters may be more inclined to trial a new food in a new environment,” says Roche, “when family stress levels are at their lowest. It’s a great opportunity for experimenting with new or unfamiliar foods.”

Healthy flying tips from Ellen Roche

Bring: rice cakes, popcorn, sandwiches, packets of crackers, formula milk — as these items may be challenging to find in the airport.
Allergies: Inform the airline in advance if any member of the family is coeliac or has a food allergy so that a suitable meal can be provided for long-haul flights. For eating out, translation cards can be purchased at allergyuk.org with details of 150 food allergens in 35 different languages.
Breastfeeding: Breastfed babies can often benefit from a feed during take-off and landing to prevent ear pain due to changing cabin pressure. Younger children might find chewing on something like slices of apple helps to reduce ear pain during the flight.
Bottle-feeding: Bottle-fed babies can also benefit from a feed during take-off and landing. Ready-to-feed cartons of formula can be useful while travelling. If using formula milk, carry it in hand luggage just in case check-in luggage goes astray.
Travel sickness: If your child has never been on an airplane previously then it may be worth it to pack anti-nausea acupressure wristbands for travel sickness — just in case.

Ellen Roche’s ideas for snacks to bring from home on a road trip

Keep it cool: Bring a cooler bag and ice block so that you can pack things such as cheese strings, cheese triangles, and yogurt.
Fast fruit: Freeze fruit pots and fruit pouches for an hour before departure so that they are deliciously cool for travelling on a hot day. Eat pouches using a bowl and spoon, rather than directly from the pouch.
Quick snacks: Breadsticks, rice cakes (choose versions with no added sugar), wholegrain crackers.
Up the veggies: Vegetables such as cherry tomatoes, baby carrots, sugar snap peas, and cucumber batons can be consumed alone or with a hummus dip / mashed avocado.
Drinks: consider purchasing a new beaker or travel cup if your child is poor at drinking fluids. Sometimes the novelty of a new cup can increase consumption. Water and milk are the only recommended fluids for young children.