Healthy Hotel Breakfast Tips

Guests of health and destination spas are served a nutritious breakfast, but what about when you are traveling and staying in hotels which are increasingly offering a Free Continental Breakfast? Spa Index Guide to Spas and a guest nutritionist weigh in on these tips for staying healthy on the road.

“Guests have asked me how to eat healthy when traveling and the most common concern is navigating continental breakfasts” says Emily Fonnesbeck, RD CD, a dietitian for Movara.

“Breakfast is the most important daily meal, and starting with a healthy one will set the tone for the rest of the day.   I have seen quite a few hotel breakfasts and all seem to have some foods in common.  

These are my recommendations.  Ideally, as always, you would fill your plate 1/2 with fruits and vegetables, 1/4 with whole grains and 1/4 with lean protein.“

Have tips of your own you’d like to share?  Weigh in with a comment, below!

If you don’t find the skim and lower fat protein options listed above, these are the next best bet. They are not the best options for fueling your day, so skip if you can.

• Sugary Yogurt (typically hotels stock artificially sweetened brands)
• Fruit juice or juice cocktail
• Prepared eggs (trays of instant scrambled eggs usually have preservatives, butter, oil and cheese)
• Sweetened cereals
• Waffles or pancakes
• White toast, bagels or English muffins
• Instant or sweetened oatmeal
• 2% milk

Pastry Baskets — they may look pretty, but they don’t always taste great. Unless you’re in a 5-Star Hotel or high end luxury resort, a free breakfast buffet almost always offers commercial average or low-quality baked goods. Nothing worth spending the calories on.

• Donuts
• Pastries
• Muffins
• Waffles
• Sausages, ham or bacon
• Biscuits
• Gravy
• Cream cheese, jams and butter
• Whole milk
• Chocolate milk

Combining some of the best choices will give you complete meals. For example, spread peanut butter on your whole grain English muffin — instead of butter or jam — and add fruit. In any situation, you are going to have an unwise choice, a mediocre choice and a best choice. Just remember to steer toward the better choice. That is all you can ask of yourself!

Don’t rely on the hotel’s free breakfast for menu planning. Pack your own shelf-stable foods, and make use of the in-room refrigerator to keep hard boiled eggs, string cheese, whole fruit, and other good choices, on hand.

Always try to fill your breakfast plate at least 1/2 full with fruits and vegetables, 1/4 with whole grains and 1/4 with lean protein. If you don’t have access to a made-to-order breakfast or healthy breakfast buffet, and you have a not terribly impressive continental breakfast buffet, try to choose based on our best choices, skip the mediocre choices, and avoid the poor choices.

Flip your thinking about “what’s for breakfast” and “what’s for lunch.” Breakfast doesn’t need to mean pancakes, waffles, eggs and bacon, and in fact, many countries outside of the United States focus on a savory breakfast, and eschew some of the sugary treats so common in the USA, saving those for desserts. Try to emulate this good thinking, and load up on healthy proteins and savory soups as your first meal of the day.

It’s tempting to take advantage of a free breakfast buffet “because hey, I paid for it” — right? Remember that a free breakfast isn’t necessarily a GOOD breakfast. Unless you’re fortunate enough to be in a spectacular spa resort or a hotel committed to health, wellness and a world-class guest experience, the options given to you will be sourced from inferior products or warehouse bulk buy style stores. Most of these inexpensive convenience foods will be loaded with preservatives, sugars and fats, and seldom taste great. You paid for your share — but you don’t need to take those items. Instead, reach for anything really perishable. The bananas, the grapes, the yogurt — will always be better tasting and better for you, than the stale pastries which came out of a plastic wrapper.