Healthier Snack Recommendations
Road trip edition.
Cody and I have driven from Arizona to Austin and vice versa over 5 times now…. Hopefully (and sadly), we just made our last trip on that drive.
Everyone knows that road trips make it especially difficult to eat healthily.
Fast food, candy, and energy drinks entice more easily. Especially when there are basically no other options.
I’ve gotten better at preparing for these road trips because we don’t want to just eat junk the entire time.
So, for our 15-hour trek from Happy Jack to Austin this time, I prepared better snacks and some pre-made food to keep us occupied.
We didn’t purchase a single snack or fast food item on our entire drive 🎉
I’ll share with you all my favorite healthier pre-packaged snacks in this post and what I prepped.
Snacks
At the cabin, I had been loving ordering from Thrive Market. They really do have a great selection of items with the best prices and was extremely convenient for me living so far from the store. I started ordering most of my canned goods and packaged items from there the last few months.
The shipping was always fast too even living in BFE Happy Jack.
What I ordered for the road trip:
Lesser Evil is one of my favorite healthier snack alternative brands. Their ingredient list isn’t 100% perfectly paleo, but pretty dang close. I want to try more of their cereals and other snacks. I’d try anything from this brand. You can typically find some of their products at Sprouts or Whole Foods, but Thrive Market seems to have the best selection.
Okay, I’ll admit. We ate these at the house before we even started our trip haha! But they were legitimately our favorite snack of what we bought. These are an incredible sour cream and onion chip alternative! They are SO GOOD! I’ll definitely be rebuying!
These are also incredible and are a great alternative for Pirate’s Booty! That’s what they tasted like to me. So good and just the right amount of cheesiness and crunchiness.
These cinnamon space balls are good and are lightly sweetened and flavored, to the point where they could use a bit more sweetness. But they still satisfy the sweet tooth a bit and are nice and crunch. (I do prefer the Siete Churro Chips below, though!)
Siete also makes some of my favorite gluten-free, healthier alternatives. (And they’re Austin based yay! We love.)
I love their tortillas and their hot sauces and spice packets. I’ve had these cookies before and these are our favorite kind if we had to pick between these and the chocolate ones.
Another staple by Siete and they use avocado as their oil. Super clean ingredient list. Delish.
Okay… I tried these after our road trip and these are INSANE! These are the perfect amount of sweetness and crunch. I was never a huge Cinnamon Toast Crunch girlie but I feel like these are the paleo snack version of a classic American cereal. I want them right now. YUM!
These have always been a favorite of mine, but I can’t buy them often because I’ll eat an entire bag in one sitting. So crunchy and good.
I always try to find dried fruit without any additional sugar. This kind by Mavuno is great. Trader Joe’s also makes a good organic dried mango without any added sugar.
A staple for our protein intake on the road. I tried the Italian ones on our Portugal trip but Cody and I both prefer the jalepeño ones best.
Simple Mills is also one of my favorite healthier alternative brands. They make delicious crackers, graham crackers, and baking mixes too. Highly recommend trying some of their items!
What I Prepped
This might be a hot take but tuna salad makes an incredible road trip snack. As long as the people you’re traveling with love you and are okay with consuming fish in the car 😃.
We weren’t going to eat this until our long haul 10-hour drive the second day, so I kept everything separate in a cooler until we were ready to eat it.
2 tuna cans
Finely diced bell peppers, celery, and carrots and kept them in the cooler
Jar of mayo in the cooler
Tupperware
Silverware
When I was ready to eat, I just mixed everything together in the Tupperware and ate them with the Simple Mills crackers and the Siete chips! It was super easy and I could feed Cody while he was driving. It was missing salt and pepper so next time I’ll have that handy or keep a little salt and pepper packet from In-N-Out to use 😉
Other easy meal/snack ideas:
Smoked sausages
Charcuterie meats and cheeses
Prep sandwiches ahead of time
Please leave me a comment and a heart ❤️ if you liked this post and recipe! Subscribe if you want recipes and cooking inspiration delivered straight to your inbox.
I hope you feel inspired to cook and create rather than order and wait.
THANK YOU, LOVE YOU, BYE!
Erin