Eating on the go often involves speed and convenience over healthy and nutritious. Why is that? It’s because packaged foods like candy bars and potato chips, and fast food chains always seem to be front and center when you are hungry or thirsty.

With business travel increasing for many, along eating out at restaurants, conferences, and company meeting events finding healthy food, or what I call nouri, is a health and wellness imperative. Too many diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are linked to what we eat. Therefore, it is no longer acceptable to assume that all food is equal, nor that all food sold in grocery stores and restaurants are “safe” to eat over the long term. Just because you don’t wind up in the hospital because of food poisoning due to e-coli or salmonella doesn’t mean that “food” is not having negative impacts on your body and setting you up for a long-term chronic illness.

Eating healthy on the go is possible, but it requires you to be a little less trusting, and a lot more critical of food products and menu items. Success often starts more by changing your perspective then focusing on food groups. Here are 5 tips for eating healthy on the go:

  1. Change Your Vocabulary. Not all food is equal, so change the word from food to nouri to describe what you should buy, order and eat for optimum health. Simply stated, nouri is non-chemically treated, non-genetically modified, whole unprocessed food that boosts the immune system, promotes energy, improves
    cellular function and reduces the risk of illness and disease.
  2. Make A Commitment. Dedicate your breakfast, lunch, dinner or even your beverage portion of your travel meal per diem to nouri.
  3. Make a Choice: If it’s not nouri, ask yourself is it worth the damage in this instance, and if so can I compensate for it later?
  4. Plan Ahead: Eat before going to the airport or at the airport to avoid eating on the plane; eat before going to business lunch or dinner to avoid unhealthy temptations; pick lodging that is conducive to finding healthy options; do a search for organic, farm-to-table, healthy, non-GMO, ethnic, vegetarian, pasture-raised beef and chicken, nutritarian, raw food restaurants to find nouri options.
  5. Focus on your routine drinks, meals and snacks. If you are a coffee drinker think about the creamer and the sweetner; if you are a soft-drink drinker, shift to water; if you are a snacker, bring your own or grab fruit, nuts, or dried fruit and nut bars instead.

You can resist the urge to grab the first thing that is front of you –in the vending machine, at the fast food place, on the menu—with these 5 tips.

Travel safe and well!