BALANCE DIETS

Eat a balanced diet, with peelable fruits and cooked vegetables.

“One of the biggest issues that people experience as they travel is that they’re eating different foods than they do in their day-to-day lives,” says Sharp. Of course, trying new foods is a key part of the travel experience. To help stabilize your gut, Sharp suggests incorporating fruits and vegetables as much as possible—the fiber helps regulate the gut.

As an extra precaution, she recommends eating fruits that you must peel to eat (e.g., bananas, oranges, and avocados) and cooked vegetables. This helps reduce exposure, as much as possible, to microbes that could cause traveler’s diarrhea.

Get enough pre- and probiotics.

Prebiotics balance out gut microbiota by providing food sources for healthy gut bacteria and inhibit the overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria. When you’re on the go, Sharp says that unripe bananas (they contain the prebiotic inulin and prebiotic-like starches that aren’t found in ripe bananas), flaxseed, and oatmeal (the less processed, the better) are some convenient ways to get them.

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