Traveling and HFCS

We're back! We had a wonderful trip back to visit family and friends in Mississippi, where it's still warm and green and fresh produce is still plentiful. I thought I'd share my experience with HFCS while we traveled.


Traveling on a HFCS-free diet, while possible, is hard. To be honest, we didn't even try. We laid aside our no-HFCS rule for the trip to save our sanity. While traveling to and from in the car and plane, our diet went down the drain. Snacks from convenience stores (after we ran out of the healthier snacks I brought), meals at McDonalds (they're often the only fast and kid-friendly option around). Seems that everything in McDonalds has HFCS in it. Buns. Salad dressing. Drinks. (Though you can get brewed tea that doesn't have HFCS at McDonalds.) And we won't even think about the fat content. The kids really dig the playgrounds and Happy Meal toys at McDonalds, but happily are not all that crazy about the food - yet. It's amazing how different fast food tastes when you haven't eaten it for a long time. You can feel the fat coating your throat for a long time after eating. Bleh.

Flying was no better. Better buy a drink before you board the plane because unless you get their nasty, bacteria-laden water, your drink almost certainly will have HFCS in it. I got a canned tea and was amazed to see HFCS as the second ingredient.

HFCS-free options are just not the norm in stores catering to travelers. First, most travelers are looking for something fast that still tastes good without caring a bit about how healthy the food is. Second, most establishments catering to travelers are looking to maximize their profit margins. HFCS-containing junk food does that.

Our diet was considerably better while we were at our destination. Our parents are not on the same HFCS-free journey that we are, but they're healthy eaters in general. Best of all, we found out that a couple of our friends are on the same health journey that we are - further along, in fact.

We had a wonderful vacation, but it's good to be back. It's good to be back on track.


Thanks to all of my guest posters! I thoroughly enjoyed reading all of the guest posts. I must apologize for the funky formatting, though. I did all of the guest posts as pre-posts, and the preview that Blogger showed didn't match what the final post looked like in most cases.