Captain Commute - Eating On The Go
In Gotham City - Here I come! we took a whirlwind tour around New York’s best eating-on-the-go food stands. You’ve always heard eating on the run is bad for you, right? It’s not really that bad compared to some other food eating habits we have.
Having lots of snack choices is important. Contrary to intuition, having lots of snack choices around doesn’t promote overeating. When you have options, your brain gets over the, “I must eat” mantra and focuses on the variety instead. Check out our weight management tips for more ideas on snacking.
Fewer and fewer people are washing their hands before they eat. In part, this decline in personal cleanliness is due to the convenience and availability of food, lack of education in the classroom and oversight or forgetfulness.
Several studies published in The Lancet and more widely popular serials such as The New York Times indicate the average school water fountain/drinking fountain has more bacteria and mold on the handles and the spout than the average public washroom (in a school).
Washing your hands will rid you of graphite from pencils, dirt and bacteria on keyboards, metals and paint coatings from door handles, and bacteria that got onto your hand when you sneezed. Ridding yourself of these sources of poor digestion will make vitamin and mineral absorption more efficient while reducing the amount of blood needed to be diverted from the brain to the stomach. Good deal, huh?
If you have to eat on the go, make it something that’s easy to digest. Smoothies are popular for this reason, but try going for whole-grain cookies and dried or fresh fruit too. Also, if you eat a water-rich food, like celery (93 per cent water), you’ll be getting your nutrients, fiber and water all at the same time. Now that’s almost Jem’Hadar-like! Notice Captain Picard never ate his croissants in the turbolift? Smart bloke, that one. Croissants are high in fat content and low in fiber and nutrients, making them difficult to digest even if you drink lots of juice with them. If your stomach has to put more energy into digesting, again, it’s diverting blood away from your brain. See, you always knew there was an explanation why his diplomacy worked most of the time against all odds.
More eateries are now offering more slurp-able soups in slurpee-like containers with extra-wide straws, so you can really eat on the go. Try them out some time. Better yet, try a homemade soup-sicle. If you have lots of leftover soup that’s pretty homogenous, like split pea soup or a gazpacho, freeze it in a popsicle maker. Both of which taste great cold, by the way. Remember that, for runny soups, you have to let the liquid turn semi-hard before sticking the popsicle stick in, otherwise it won’t be a very stable popsicle.