How to Prevent a Food Emergency!

This week’s recipe is more about creating a recipe for success rather than creating a menu item. This week, we are giving you the right ingredients to avoid food emergencies.

When your blood sugar starts to drop, you are hard-wired to eat anything (and everything) in sight. Thinking you can use willpower to control your hunger or cravings, contradicts the science of how your brain controls your behavior. The more willpower you use, the more it backfires, eventually. You find yourself automatically overeating and bingeing or just eating whatever happens to be in front of you. This is what I call a food emergency. Even I can fall prey to a food emergency from time to time.

This is why I always recommend having an emergency food pack handy when you’re on the go. I’m on the go almost 90% of the time, so it’s important for me to have my favorite foods and snacks easily available. An emergency food pack almost guarantees that you won’t make disastrous food choices.

Here are some of my favorite snacks to take on the road. You’ll see that most of them include some form of fat because healthy dietary fat is satiating and prevents me from reaching for bad stuff. I never leave home without these:

• Canned wild salmon or sardines
• Jerky (bison, grass-fed beef or turkey — try Krave or Grass Fed Jerky Chews)
• Salmon Jerky (Vital Choice)
• Nuts and seeds (almonds, walnuts, pecans, macadamia nuts and pumpkin seeds)
• Nut butter (almond, pecan, macadamia) These squeeze packs are great for on the go
• Coconut butter packets (Artisana brand is great)

For short trips and to take to the office or school:

• Hard-boiled omega-3 eggs
• Cut-up carrots, cucumbers, peppers and celery in Ziploc baggies (pair with guacamole or try this tomatillo salsa)
• 1/2 cup Mixed berries in a small Ziploc bag
• And sometimes I love to cut open an avocado and sprinkle a little salt or wheat-free tamari on top of it