Early mornings, late nights, crossing time zones and living out of a suitcase can all affect our diet. At the mercy of hotel restaurants, fast food outlets, airline meals and a final chocolate on the pillow, it can be difficult to maintain any kind of dietary discipline. So what help can we expect?

Hotels

The major hotel groups have been quick off the mark to accommodate changing palates and the demand for a lighter diet.

Hilton has introduced its “Healthy Options” menu in all its European and African properties, which indicates which items are low in fat and is available in the hotel’s restaurants, on room service menus and also in the minibar. “The whole project started because business travellers go through very hectic travel agendas and they are looking forward to something fresher and easier to digest,” says Jean-Sebastien Kling, director of food and beverage for Europe, Africa, the UK and Ireland.

Colin Bennett, area manager for England for Starwood Hotel Group, agrees: “We have found that business travellers are now looking for a healthier option, but they are also looking for quicker options and more flexible ones so we have had to adapt our menus to fit in with this. We have moved away from cream-based sauces and sauces with alcohol because people don’t want that anymore, they want more delicate flavours, which are much lighter.”

Jonathan Sheard, director of operations for Novotel UK, adds: “I think most hotel groups respect the need for guests to have a choice, so that those business travellers who have a regime when they are at home shouldn’t find it a hassle to keep up that regime when they are away.”
Novotel’s New Generation Elements restaurants offer each course at any size, so you can have a starter as a main course or a main course as a starter, while Marriott’s Eat.Drink.Balance program at Renaissance Hotels and Resorts has led to the six million pounds of French fries served at Marriott Hotels each year no longer being cooked with trans fats but with more healthy oils.

Sheraton is currently developing a partnership with HEAL (Healthy Eating Active Living) – an offshoot of the International Business Leaders Forum, formed under the guidance of the Prince of Wales. Bennett says: “We are putting a bowl of apples in the corridors on all our floors – we have apples next to the water in the fitness centre with a sign saying ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’.”

The hotel breakfast

Breakfast is often cited as the most important meal of the day, and it can be the first hurdle in keeping to a healthy lifestyle while away from home. Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park offers the “Fitness Breakfast” (£30 per person), available 24 hours a day and including freshly squeezed juices, fresh fruit, wheat-free bread, and eggs cooked to order in a variety of healthy styles, including egg-white omelette. (As well as the selection of fruits and cereals, the usual sausages, hash browns and crispy bacon are also on offer.)

Novotel has introduced a menu for the breakfast table, supported by Kelloggs, which explains why breakfast is essential to a healthy lifestyle and that people who eat breakfast are generally slimmer as it gets the metabolism going. Sheard says: “For breakfast the buffet hits the objective of a balanced diet because people can have what they want. You can have bacon, sausages and eggs, or five pieces of fruit.”

Labelling food

Just as supermarkets have begun to label products with the recommended daily amounts of salt, sugar and fat, Novotel introduced guideline menus to five of its hotels in April to flag up the guideline daily amounts on each menu item as well as the calorific value of a standard portion. “We are not stopping people from choosing what they want, ” says Sheard, “but now they can see the breakdown. It’s just to inform them.”
This emphasis on healthy options is also being applied by Novotel to coffee breaks. Biscuits and pastries are still available, but also fruit kebabs or smoothies. Sheard says: “Our guests don’t ask for it but when it is there in front of them they actually go for it. It gives them an instant sugar boost.”

Hilton also flags up the healthy choices at breakfast with colour-coded options – purple for low fat/low calorie, red for high energy, green for high fibre and blue for low cholesterol. And the Hilton Meetings programme is integrating some fast healthy food such as smoothies and salads or grilled items for lunch. “We also have bookmarks in the menu with ten tips to make your travel easier in terms of diet and it’s been so popular people have been taking them away with them,” says Kling.

But while healthy eating is on everyone’s mind, there is clearly nothing wrong with a bit of comfort food every now and then. Sheard adds: “Healthy does not satisfy everyone’s choice – for instance, the most consumed item on the menu is the grilled steak and so we don’t want to take that away. What we do is offer baked potato with the steak and if guests want to have fries then they can have them as a side order. So we are setting up the menu as a balance.”

Eating in hotels: tips from the British Diabetic Association

Stay away from the minibar! Yes, you could just raid the crisps
and peanuts but try to choose sensibly off the hotel menu and make sure
you eat a proper cooked meal rather than snacking.
Choose extra portions of vegetables rather than a side order of chips.
Have a starter such as a salad, vegetable soup or fruit juice.
If the temptation of a cooked breakfast is too much you can still
choose healthier options – poached or boiled eggs rather than fried –
but stay away from the sausages and hash browns. Try to have high fibre
cereal with low-fat milk and fruit. It gives you a slow release of
sugar so you won’t suffer from a mid-morning dip and it’ll start you
off right for the day.
Make sure you drink plenty of water.
Jacqui Lowdon, dietician and spokesperson for the BDA

Airlines

The experience of eating at 36,000ft has certainly changed over the years as more and more airlines aim to reflect dining on the ground with their in-flight meals. In business class this often means having well-known chefs design the menus, having your table laid for you and even a choice of wine. But what does it mean for our diets?

Firstly, let’s dispel some popular misconceptions. Airline meals are not unhealthy. Bmi in-flight chef Jack Bradley explains that there are no deep-fat fryers in the galleys, and airlines use ovens not microwaves to reheat food, so meals are either cooked with dry heat (eg for meats) or steamed heat (eg for pasta). “People just imagine everything is packaged and reheated but there is a little bit more to it than that,” he says.

You also might imagine that airline food would need a little help with flavour, but beefing up the salt content isn’t usually the preferred solution. Carol Conway, catering innovation manager for BA worldwide, says:”We don’t do it by adding lots of extra salt although sometimes we will spice up the dish a bit to accommodate for the fact that taste buds are affected in-flight. So curries are very popular – they reheat very well and the flavours really come out.”

Airlines prepare their food on the ground in huge kitchens at the airport using caterers such as Gate Gourmet or LSG. The whole process – from preparation, refrigeration, to oven to passenger – is a matter of hours, so serving fresh local produce is not a problem.

Gate Gourmet provides meals for lounges and airlines such as British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Emirates, South African Airlines, TAM and Iberia. Karen Lowe, head of menu development, says: “There is a lot of focus today on well-being and people are more conscious of what they eat and how it affects them, so we try to provide a balanced alternative. We can make suggestions but ultimately it’s the airlines’ choice what they serve on their planes.”

And just as hotels have noticed a shift in what its customers want, the same is true of the airlines. Michael Kent, head of in-flight services and cabin crew for Gulf Air, says: “Most people these days have some degree of education about food. There are cookery shows and health magazines and what they are looking for in-flight is parallel to what they experience in real life.”

BA serves 36,000 meals a day on long-haul out of London and 29,000 short-haul. Conway says: “Research shows us people want different things at different times, so on a weekday flight passengers will behave differently from a Saturday evening flight. Some of the snack items will change and people will be more indulgent and may have a glass of champagne rather than a fruit tea.”

Josefine Corsten, senior vice-president of corporate communications at LSG Sky Chefs for Lufthansa, says: “The demand for healthy food gets stronger the longer the flight. Generally speaking, Lufthansa menus have changed – the cooking times are shorter and the menus are seasonal so that the caterers can be as close to the product as possible.”

What’s on the menu?

Gulf Air recently won an award from Skytrax for in-flight food and beverage voted by the general public (around 100,000 people). The award is for the overall design and presentation of the food. Gulf Air has 104 chefs who travel around the world and design the menus, visiting markets and selecting local produce from each region. Michael Kent says: “I have been in this business for 25 years and we are always trying to find the answer to make food on board realistic and reflect what you can get in a restaurant on the ground – this is why we have the chef on board.”

Bob Ferguson of Emirates, which serves 100,000 meals a day, says: “Our low-calorie meals [250 calories] have had tremendous success and within a week we had to put more on board. About 25 per cent of people in first and business class are ordering them.”

Bmi’s in-flight chef Bradley says: “I think we have always been health-conscious and we have tried to make our dishes as low-fat as possible with no heavy cream sauces.”

Karen Lowe, head of menu development for Gate Gourmet, says: “Perhaps some people feel with the money they have paid they should be offered more than poached chicken, but a business traveller who flies frequently isn’t particularly interested in the luxury offering and may be more interested in having a healthy meal.”

The airlines have realized the need to give us choice and with that some sort of flexibility. BA’s Club Kitchen aims to do just that, with a new area for passengers to help themselves to snacks or smoothies and sandwiches and fresh fruit salads.

If all these options still do not meet your dietary requirements there is always the option of booking your meal 24 hours in advance, as most airlines offer special meals for people on diets for medical or religious reasons. Lufthansa says that more than 350,000 vegetarian meals are ordered in advance each year, making up nearly 60 per cent of all the special meals offered.

But although every effort is made to offer us a healthy choice, it seems that sometimes we just can’t live up to our good intentions. Conway explains: “Customers often say they will pick the healthy choice but when they get on board they tend to go for the comfort food.” In which case, of course, we have only ourselves to blame when we start piling on the pounds.

Eating on airlines

The good thing about airline meals is that they do tend to be small portion sizes, so it is difficult to overeat on a plane.
If you are being very careful you can ask for special dietary requirements 24 hours before the flight.
The problem always comes with dessert – when it’s put is in front of you are more likely to eat it. Ask for fruit instead.
Avoid alcohol on long-haul flights and drink a lot of water instead, to make sure you keep your body hydrated.
On low-cost flights which don’t provide food, take your own meals and healthy snacks.
Jacqui Lowdon, dietician and spokesperson for the BDA; visit bda.uk.com