On the Road: What to Feed the Kids?
Next weekend I’ll be putting two kids in the car and driving 10 hours to visit the grandparents. Whenever I’m faced with any kind of day-long (or longer) travel with kids I spend at least a week preparing. One of the main concerns I have is food.
How to eat healthy and roughly on schedule while traveling is a puzzle for the ages. The kids need to stay relatively close to their routine and eat food that’s not going to make them crazy (in our family that means no sugar), so they can sit in the car longer than nature ever intended children under eight to do.
I’ve assembled a little chart here of travel food options, complete with the pros and cons. I invite you to add your own suggestions and experiences in the comments!
The Restaurant Option:
The restaurant option can be a good one, especially in inclement weather. That’s pro #1. Restaurant restrooms also tend to be clean and well stocked and tend to offer good space for changing diapers. And depending on the restaurant, a friendly waiter can be a big help while on a pit-stop with kids. (When I must take the kids alone on this kind of trip, I like to stop at a particular Cracker Barrel where there is a large pool of grandmotherly ladies in the gift shop willing to entertain one or both of my kids while I get everybody diapered and to the potty and washed up.)
The downside to the restaurant option is that there isn’t always a good one when you need to stop. Depending on what your kids are used to eating, the golden arches might be a fine choice (and it’s almost always quickly available) but if your kids don’t eat fast food often, a road trip isn’t the greatest time to start experimenting with a new diet (for example, see our family’s sugar issues above).
Another downside to the restaurant is that it can be cheap, but often isn’t. With gas prices where they are, who needs to tack on another $40 for a meal for four or five people? Or $80 for a couple of meals?
Most restaurants don’t offer much in the way of activity for children who’ve been cooped up in the car either. Yes, there is, again, that golden arches play ground, but as an only option (as it often is) it’s kind of limiting.
The Picnic Option #1: Pack Something
I always swear I’m going to do this, but almost never do. The idea of packing up some of our favorite healthy foods from home in a cooler and hauling it to a picnic table under an oak tree at a rest stop is super appealing. The trouble is, with two small kids, just getting them packed and organized in other ways tends to run me right up to the moment we need to leave the house and I tend to give up the picnic plan at the last minute.
The pros of course are that you can pack healthy food you know your kids like and tailor it to how it might effect their behavior and mood in the car. Another great plus is the opportunity to run around a bit in some green space at the rest stop, as long as it isn’t freezing or raining. And you can do it on whatever budget works best for your family.
When I have managed to get it together and pack food, I’ve been very pleased with Laptop Lunch boxes. In fact I love these colorful bento-style food-to-go boxes so much they inspire me to go the extra mile. They aren’t cheap, but they are durable, made of safe (non-chemical-leeching) plastic and perfectly suit my family’s style of eating–little servings of a number of things. I got the ones with carrying cases that include room for a water bottle, flatware and an ice pack if needed. The downside of course, is that you have to wash them out (and keep up with all their parts) but you can feel good about your environmental friendliness when you’re rinsing them in the rest stop bathroom.
The Picnic Option #2:Â Pre-Packaged Meals
Ah Lunchables! How we love to hate thee! Filled with processed cheese-food and containing enough sodium to choke a horse, these tidy little meals-to-go are nevertheless oh-so convenient. And not too pricey, compared to a restaurant on the road.
Hey, if you like them, knock yourself out. But I am one of those Picky Food Moms and prefer to avoid them at all costs. Imagine my glee when I heard about GoPicnic, a new company offering the convenience of a Lunchable with none (well, almost none) of the guilt. I recently tired a couple of Gopicnic’s adult meals and a couple of their kids’ meals. I give them four out of five stars. They get points for being mostly pretty healthy (or reeeeeeeeally healthy if you’re comparing them to Lunchables), with a careful balance of fat, sodium and sugar in each package. They even include some organic products and the ones we tried were about an 80% hit in terms of everyone liking the food. They offer vegetarian, vegan, kosher, halal and allergy-sensitive options too which is another pro.
The cons are, they are a bit pricey, the servings are awfully small, and the packaging is mostly not recyclable. But, failing to pack my own, this would be a great back up choice for travel and other special circumstances.
What’s your solution to on-the-road meals?
Full Disclosure: GoPicnic sent me some free sample products for review. Laptop Lunches, sadly, did not. I ponied up the cash for those gems all by myself! Lunchables, McDonald’s, and Cracker Barrel don’t know I exist one way or another.
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Tags: cracker barrel, eating on the road, food, gopicnic, laptop lunches, lunchables, McDonalds, picnics, rest stops, restaurants, road trips with kids, Shannon LC Cate, travel with kids
7 Comments
Cali Mom commented on Aug 04 09 at 12:45 pmWe make our own food, but put in in disposable containers. I know, boo hiss, disposables. But it is important to me to eat fresh food, and on the road I want the convenience to throw the package out and make room in the car. Even “healthy” packaged food is not that healthy.
patricia commented on Aug 04 09 at 2:54 pmFor a decent fast food choice, we like Chik-Fil-A (we live in the south, so that helps). It’s not super pricey, nor super healthy, but better than McDonalds (we get our 3 year old the fruit instead of the fries) and almost always has an indoor playground, good for running off cooped-up kid energy, even in inclement weather. For a pricier option, we like Ruby Tuesday’s, because while the food isn’t great for the adults, they have good kid standards like mac n cheese and chicken fingers, but they also have a salad bar where I can pick up fruit, cherry tomatoes, etc.
Manjari commented on Aug 04 09 at 7:25 pmGreat picture! Are those your cuties?
Sabrina commented on Aug 08 09 at 3:18 pmWe always pack everything. Allergies suck. We even pack enough so that we have food at Grandma’s house, and for any particular outings/parties we’re going to be attending, and enough to pack ourselves more on-the-road food for the trip home.
If you keep at it, it becomes automatic and easy. I absolutely love having our own food with us. It saves a ton of money and time. No waiting to be served, no searching for a restaurant in an unfamilliar location. And best of all we can eat whenever we’re hungry, no need to wait until we get to civilization!
Lori commented on Aug 17 09 at 1:36 amI confess, we have always done the Golden Arches or some variation. I will not lie, I like fast food and consider it part of the vacation treat.
We let the kids play the entire time we are there when DH and I eat. Then we order their meal and let them eat in the van. Usually I am a fan of the family table, but this gives them a real chance to burn off energy and eating in the van helps them kill time.
Of course you could follow the same concept with a healthy pic nic at a park.
Shannon Cate commented on Aug 17 09 at 9:11 amI’m back now, and we did the picnic at rest stops this time. Given that I was the only adult on the drive with a 2-year old and a 4-year old (never done it that way before–gah!) I have to say I looked forward to sitting in the grass and catching a little peace while the girls ran foot races between the trees. They might have burned off their energy at the golden arches, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed that half as much.
