In Moderation
Providing health, nutrition and fitness advice in moderate amounts to help you live your best life.
Rob: Co-host of the podcast "In Moderation" and fitness enthusiast. Rob has a background in exercise science and is passionate about helping others achieve their health and fitness goals. He brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the show, providing valuable insights on topics such as calories, metabolism, and weight loss.
Liam: Co-host of the podcast "In Moderation" and new father. Liam has a background in nutrition and is dedicated to promoting a balanced and sustainable approach to health and wellness. With his witty and sarcastic style, Liam adds a unique flavor to the show, making it both informative and entertaining.
In Moderation
In Moderation After Dark
Ever found yourself stuck at a rest stop, staring at rows of fast food options and wondering if there's any hope for your nutrition goals? Fear not! This episode tackles the eternal challenge of eating well while traveling.
We dive deep into practical strategies anyone can use on the road. From the magic of pre-portioned nut packs to the underrated power of dried fruit (dried pears might just change your life), we share our go-to solutions that are affordable, convenient, and genuinely satisfying. Want to know which cuisines offer the healthiest restaurant options when you're away from home? We've got you covered with surprising insights about Mexican food (yes, salsa absolutely counts as a vegetable serving) and why Greek/Mediterranean tops our list.
The conversation takes some fascinating turns as we explore emerging food innovations like cricket flour protein and Japan's fiber-enhanced Diet Coke. Could these be the future of nutrition? We sample some unconventional options so you don't have to—though our $30 Japanese Diet Coke experiment might have been a bit extreme even for us.
Most importantly, we emphasize the balance that makes healthy eating sustainable, especially during travel. You don't need to finish that entire donut if you're satisfied halfway through. You can enjoy your road trip treats while still making choices that support your health goals.
Whether you're planning a cross-country adventure or just looking for better options during your daily commute, this episode delivers practical wisdom wrapped in our signature laid-back conversation. Hit subscribe and join us for more nutrition insights that actually fit into real life!
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Welcome to another late night episode of In Moderation Episode. I don't care, I'm tired.
Speaker 2:In Moderation After Dark.
Speaker 1:It takes forever for Liam to get Oakley to sleep.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, I feel like our podcast, though, is kind of in this nice situation where it's already after dark, like no matter what time we talk, it's usually the topics we bring up are pretty much the ones that we learn to talk about after dark, so our after dark episodes get us fined by whichever company, whichever governing body monitors podcasts. Wait, hold on a second, I don't think there's anything like that.
Speaker 2:You just do whatever you want. This is why podcasts are such a problem and why you shouldn't give it to white people, white men too often. Bad things, bad things happen at this point.
Speaker 1:We could just go get ai to do it for us. We'll just make her have you?
Speaker 2:oh, come on. Have you seen the ai baby podcast? No, actually oh, come on, bro, come on, okay.
Speaker 2:So there's a everybody, everybody's listening yes, everyone listening is like oh, I've seen this. How has rob not seen this? It's, there's um a podcast where they literally use ai to make a baby talk to its dog, like, and the dog is talking back, and they're both kind of talking about how like their experiences as a baby or a dog and it's fantastic, like somebody wrote it. And then you know they just use ai for me to make this ai baby and dog. It's so I'm going to send it to you. It's so great.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:Oh, and it's doing so well. It's funny. It's like a regular podcast Boring. I want to see a baby talk to a dog. They're both talking about like shitting in the house. It's great, man, I'm saying it's so good.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's fantastic, like it's a whole running series, I mean, I feel like that's something that we'll end up talking about at some point is shitting in the house.
Speaker 2:Uh, eventually, yeah, I mean, we all get there, right? You poop in the house at the beginning and at the end that's what happens, and the end it comes sooner for a lot of you never know, right knock on wood anyway.
Speaker 2:Well, if I sound weird, it's because I'm literally on my phone because I was going to go visit my family this weekend in New York, but then Oakley got a cold virus and couldn't go to daycare and so we're like, all right, we're just going. So we just got in our car and we just drove. We just drove like eight hours, got to Utica at like midnight, slept for a few hours, got back up, got to albany, saw the family did things. Now I'm here. So, yeah, I wanted. So I what I want to talk about is, uh, because we always get asked about like eating healthy on the road. We've talked about this before, but we've also done 8 000 episodes by this point point. So, like who remembers anything? I don't, so I feel like people need a reminder of this. Anyway, you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:One of the episode options was we were going to reminisce about our favorite episodes and then we were both like we don't remember anything.
Speaker 2:I remember definitely certain parts, especially with Mike. Mike slash needs a plan like that.
Speaker 1:Well, it's hard not to remember parts with Mike because Mike's been on 20,000 episodes.
Speaker 2:He's been on a few of them and he's always just kind of unhinged and that's what's fun about it. But so you didn't like here, here, you know what I did. So like we're like. We're like OK, we just got to go Right. So I had like no real planning. I was like, ok, we just got to go Right.
Speaker 2:So I had like no real planning. I was like, ok, what can I bring? So I just got like a cooler, didn't throw an ice pack in it. Why do I need the cooler? I don't know, but that's what I was carrying stuff in, who cares? I threw I had a bunch of apples.
Speaker 2:I was like, ok, I need to use those up. I had a bunch of avocados. I was like, by the time I get back, those are just gonna be bad, so I need to take those with me. I threw some bananas in there and, um, oh, bunch of uh peanut packets, bro, like they got these, like at costco. It's like different flavors. They got like chili, lime and like spicy ones and these japanese style, like peanuts, and they're like, yeah, like 200 to 250 calories somewhere in there. You know, obviously like these like seven, eight, nine grams protein, whatever it is, and they're really good. Like those are just like such a nice little because it's already pre-portioned. People say like oh, not so many calories, and it's like all right. So I got my nut packs, I got multiple nut packs, so I'm all set.
Speaker 1:Don't be laughing at my nut packs my nut on the topic of being on the road, as well as reminiscing. Actually, one of my favorite life hacks was when we had Dr Terry Simpson on and he talked about getting a bag of baby carrots to munch on while you're driving.
Speaker 2:Oh, the baby carrots. That's right, that was a good one Nutrition and helps keep you awake. And you know what? No-transcript? God damn, not nuts. Get out of here, you stupid it's the internet.
Speaker 1:You have to be correcting somebody oh, my god, the um.
Speaker 2:Actually it's just. But now you know what? I just leaned into it because, like I have to, and you know what it's good it's. All comments help the algorithm and are much appreciated, thank you. So you just gotta go with it. Oh, and I you know what else I got? I grabbed a giant bag of dried mango. There's like no sugar added dried mango. That's not this crack, it's crack man. It's so good, kroger, if you have a kroger. They just started selling, uh, these mixtures of it's just dried fruit, but it's a bunch of different fruit. It's pineapple, it's plums, it's like apples, I don't know. I think there's apple.
Speaker 1:No, there's like that question mark.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not apples, it wasn't apples, it was apricots. But it also had pears and my wife and I have been fighting to get the pear. She just goes in there. I come, I go into the kitchen and she's just got a bunch of the pears out of there. I'm like no, no, no, you can't just pick all the best ones out of there. I go in there. Now all I have is fucking prunes and apricots. I'm like this isn't fair, that's.
Speaker 1:That's bullshit, yeah that's some bullshit. You can't just pick the one thing out of the bag.
Speaker 2:Pears. The pears are really good, though they are like they're the best one in the pack. I don't know Dried pear, why are dried pears more of a thing? I'm telling you go get yourself some dried pears. At least the ones in this pack were like really good, and there's again no sugar added, so it's like awesome. It's just a fruit. It makes it so easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think people underestimate the power of dried fruit.
Speaker 2:Dried fruit and fucking Oakley is just smashing grapes and raisins. She doesn't care how much water are in these grapes. There could be lots of water in the grapes. There could be no water in these grapes and just be fucking raisins. She loves them either way and those are great and they're super cheap too. I love that she loves raisins because, like, they're a lot cheaper than grapes and I can just buy like for like two, three bucks.
Speaker 1:You have the people that are like um well, they're dehydrated, so they don't have water content, so they're higher in caloric density, and it's like, well, just have some water drink something.
Speaker 2:Hey, bro, have a glass of water, that's great. Yeah, like it's, it's. And plus, you can get the raisin packets. That's what I give oakley, and she sits in back in the back with a little packet of raisins and she smashes that shit like, and you know, for her, like at this age she's always wants the welch's fruit snacks and, like you know, I'll give those to her, but I try and get her to eat the fruit, so like whenever she's like hey, raisins, sure, don't eat as many as those. We'll cut up an avocado, just put it in a bowl. She'll just eat it with her hands. I'm like, shit, that works, that's fine, whatever. And then we stopped. I think what cuisine would you say is like the health is the easiest to just like eat quote unquote healthy.
Speaker 1:What cuisine?
Speaker 2:Yeah, like you know, you got like Italian, you're going to get like Chinese food, that sort of thing. What would you pick? What would you go with if you're like I'm trying to eat healthy, so I'm going to pick?
Speaker 1:this cuisine. Well, I mean, it's kind of a copout answer, but I would have to say Greek.
Speaker 2:Greek's good actually. No, that's a good one. You got like the different vegetables. They got like the Greek salads and stuff like feta and tomatoes and cucumbers and all that shit. That's actually really good. And they have like falafels Greek right, it's Mediterranean, falafel's kind of Mediterranean. So I was like that's Greek, I like fal, I got, I think I also got a burrito. It's like oh yeah, there's beans and burrito too. Perfect cheese, awesome.
Speaker 1:And hey, just be careful with the beans if you're driving a long distance and you're not used to the fiber and you're not used to it, I can handle it, no problem.
Speaker 2:But like, yeah, people have people have issues with that. Was this big argument going around? Um, you know, like tiktok about salsa, salsa is 100 percent a vegetable. People are like salsa is not vegetable. I'm like, excuse me, tell me what's in salsa right now, rob, tell me what's in salsa, what goes in salsa um tomatoes, tomatoes, and I've never made a salsa, so never made a salsa. You can okay think about a salsa. What?
Speaker 1:I think what else does it have celery in it?
Speaker 2:I don't think it's. Usually it's like peppers and cilantro and like you know that sort of stuff, right yeah? So like a bunch of vegetables it's literally a bunch of vegetables like chopped up, pureeded up, whatever. So how is it not a vegetable? And like, so you know, like, hey, you get you. Like, oh, sugar chips, whatever I got my, I got my side of vegetables. Right, guacamole, fucking guacamole, just avocado.
Speaker 1:Come on, mexican man, it's one of those cases where, if we had each of the individual ingredients, they'd be healthy, but as soon as we combine them, people are like no, that's no longer healthy.
Speaker 2:I'm like, okay, you had chips. I get it. Chips are in calories, but you still get your vegetables, man. So that's what I'm saying. You go to like I got my diet soda, because of course it was Diet Pepsi. Was I sad? Of course I was sad, but you got to roll with it, so at least I had my diet soda. And then, yeah, I have my side of vegetables and salsa and guacamole chips. And yeah, I got like a bean burrito and that's. You know, I like listen people give shit, like I order the vegetarian stuff. It's also cheaper when I get like just like a bean burrito with like rice and beans and then you know, know, like a side of fajita, it's like 10 to like 13, it's not bad at all.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to think of what that would be in canadian. Who knows, doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:Uh, it's 10 celsius yeah, about that, that sounds about right and then, oh, afterwards, we stopped.
Speaker 2:There was a caribbean uh, not restaurant like the grocery store next door and oakland. I went over and we got some like little beads, like these jamaican beads they're super cool. And, um, sugar cane. I bought sugar cane. There was five dollars for like this 12 foot sugar cane and they're like we can cut it up and I was like that'd be very nice. That would make it a lot easier on me.
Speaker 2:So I've got a whole bunch of the car although I mean we have the suv, I would have to like stuff it in like you do like, like when you get planks from home depot or whatever it's like all the way up to your windshield. It's fine. But I would have done that shit. I wouldn't even have that sugar cane. It was like five dollars. So, yeah, I have a bunch of okay, and I remember when we were in jamaica they would like chop it up and give it to you. It was so good. You just like nom on it. It's just sweet, but it's like. Of course it's sweet like it's sugar cane, but it's got just this slightly earthy thing to it. That's so good, man, if you've never had just like sugar cane biting it off like you know the cane.
Speaker 2:Whatever is good, that's good I can't say I have totally worth it and like, yeah, like they imported it is, it's pretty cheap I've had coca leaves right off the plant have you. I've never done that. I want drugs. Oh, speaking of drugs, the best drug, the what's the best drug in the world? Rob caffeine caffeine, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it doesn't affect you, we don't care for everyone else, it's the best drug in the world. So, um, I load up on my caffeine. I love it, like Like when I especially you're we're driving and like it's like nine and a half hours we're going to go. So I definitely. Oh, I was pissed, though I got. I went to Starbucks and I got. I was like I just wanted a coffee with milk. I opened the ship. There's no milk in there, it was just a black coffee. I was kind of mad about that. But then we went to this co-op here and we got some good coffee. So, yeah, coffee and caffeine and coffee have been shown to help decrease the risk of Alzheimer's and dementia and shit. Caffeine is just awesome. 10 out of 10. If I was given, if there was any drug that I would give a 10 out of 10 to, it's 100% caffeine, especially a long long card I think most people are going to agree with that right.
Speaker 2:I mean I know like there's always guys. You got here, you got your cocaine fans, get your marijuana fans. Obviously different groups of people typically, they don't generally intertwine too much. But me, I'm over here, I need my caffeine. You get in my Coke Zero too. When they actually give you Coke Zero instead of Pepsi no-transcript, where it's got the caffeine and it's got the cocaine in it Just a little bit.
Speaker 1:Just a little bit.
Speaker 2:Listen, I'm not saying I'm going to be a coke head, but I would 100% drink an old school coke that had that just little bit in it, wouldn't you?
Speaker 1:I'm sure we could find some on the dark web. You have to make it.
Speaker 2:Can you make it yourself? Do you just get we're going to give tips and shit? Do you just get a little bit of cocaine and add it to a Coke? But like that's, it's not the same, Like it's, are they doing the same recipe?
Speaker 1:Shit, I don't know. We're talking about dark web and cocaine. We are now officially on all the government lists.
Speaker 2:It's after dark. We should have was after dark, so it's fine.
Speaker 1:We did say it was after dark.
Speaker 2:And now we're starting about caffeine and cocaine. So it's fine, it's fine, I would totally drink one. I want one. So bad, that's got to be so good.
Speaker 1:It would be an experience, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:I drink a few also. But yeah, then we're here and like what else do we get? Because, like, once we get here, then we just kind of like have to order out. I like to go subs we went to what was it Just now. I like Jimmy John's, get the tuna man Tuna. Give me all the veggies, give me the jalapeno.
Speaker 1:Give me the banana, peppers and spicy stuff.
Speaker 2:Tuna's a hack man. Tuna hack Tuna. Jack Skip Jack. There's a joke Skip Jack Tuna, skip Jack Tuna Hack. That's it. That's one of the excuses. Get your Skipjack tuna hack. Oh man, I'm going to make my own brand of tuna. It's called Skipjack tuna hack and it's going to be all protein.
Speaker 1:It would fly off the shelves.
Speaker 2:You know, I make protein powder. I make protein powder. It's tuna powder. No wait, never mind, that's terrible, that sounds awful.
Speaker 1:Have you seen who started making all the protein powders, as well as flour, with crickets?
Speaker 2:Oh, the cricket flour is cool, man, I've seen that I never bought it. So if anyone will listen, there's like the future, man, the future is crickets, because we're not going to have cows and pigs and shit, so we have to be eating crickets. So there, pigs and shit, so we have to be eating crickets. So there's like these farms where they just have a ton, not like a farm like you think of now, but like little farms because the crickets are smaller. What is this? A farm for ants? No, it's a farm for crickets. So then you know like it's crickets and they grind them up and they turn them into a flower and like I don't think you can do like a one-to-one substitute for like wheat flour, but like supposedly you can take like a quarter of the flour or whatever and use your, your cricket flour and it's like super high protein, because what else are like in crookets? They're not like, they're not fatty animals, fatty insects, whatever they are.
Speaker 1:They're pretty much pure protein.
Speaker 2:So it's just protein, exactly. And you just got your cricket flour. I, I mean, boy, I feel like marketing that to America is going to be the challenge. Yeah, that's kind of been, I think, the problem so far. We just need to like revamp it, though, into more like a protein thing. We need to because, listen, jim Bros will eat fucking dust if you tell it's high in protein, you know, like sawdust or whatever. We just need to, we need to market it to them.
Speaker 1:I think, starting off, gym bros will also dry scoop pre-workout, if you give them bigger gains cricket, cricket.
Speaker 2:There's, I'm gonna have to come, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to workshop the cricket thing. But like, yeah, I think that's where you start off with that. But no, I haven't had any. I haven't had any crickets or cricket powder. I've kind of kept to the, you know, more normal stuff like sandwiches. Oh, you know, I just got though. Um, I ordered, uh, coke, diet coke from japan, diet coke joke from japan because, japan.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna try it tomorrow so maybe when people listen to this the video will be out. But, like, I brought it with me to film while I'm here because it's um diet coke but with a ton of fiber added to it. That's basically all it is really. Yeah, and I was like dude, that sounds awesome. But you know how much I paid for it, like 25. It was like close to $30 for one, just for one, holy crap. Yes, because they have to import that shit and I was like well, I'm not buying any more than one I'll tell you that much but I'll buy it to try it for a video. So we can maybe like convince Coke to start producing it here because, like all we pop and shit, listen all the people I speak to, all the pop and shit, listen all the people I speak about, all the pop and like all that stuff.
Speaker 1:I'm like I'd like it, but like it's more expensive. Can't coke just be like yeah, we also added some fiber to our stuff. Here you go. It's hilarious, all the uh, the um, maha people convincing for the.
Speaker 2:What a cane sugar all this time they've been convincing for fiber.
Speaker 2:That would have been, that would have been amazing honestly, if you just take like even regular coke and just added some like some soluble fiber, that would be better. Because that's what they always say like, oh, juice and soda has no fiber, all right, well, we put fiber in there, is it perfect? No, but it's better than just swapping out those corn. It's corn syrup for table sugar, which is almost the same thing. Yeah, exactly so I would love a diet, or, yeah, like to do Diet Coke or Coke Zero, just add fiber to it. Why don't we have that, like Olipop and what's the other one? Poppy are doing that shit and they're charging like two, three times the price. Yeah, give me that fiber Coke, give me the Coke fiber.
Speaker 1:Give me Coke with caffeine, cocaine and fiber. All together. I want all three.
Speaker 2:I want my insides to fight it out and just see what happens. That's what I want. Who's going to win? Imagine someone who's not used to fiber having a Coke that has cocaine, caffeine and just fiber. All together, I have to call out of work for two weeks. Oh, that would be great though.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't want to be near that bathroom.
Speaker 2:Oh man, she just handed out at work. Oh dude, I would pay to watch instead of cameras.
Speaker 2:We just handed it out at the office. But yeah, other than that, just like the simple shit, right, like I got you know, grab the simple shit, right, like I got you know, grab your snacks and stuff like that. You know you go to restaurants. It's totally fine. And also, you know what else we had, fucking, my dad brought some cinnamon rolls. I just had some cinnamon rolls and I had it also picked up a donut and I had some. I didn't even finish it because it was like really sweet, it was like a lot. That's the thing. Like you don't have to finish it, right, like I didn't eat the whole donut just because it was a lot. It was just like really like it was good, but it was just like butter and sugar and I'm like I don't know if I just want like this whole entire donut, so I ate like half of it, but it was, you know, delicious.
Speaker 2:You don't have to force yourself to finish it yeah, we really have to get past that I feel like people need to be reminded that, yeah, like you really need a reminder that like you don't have to finish it, it's fine like I ate. I ate like half and I was like that was good, I'm good, I eat the whole thing. I probably, you know, it might not feel like as good. I feel good now, like you have the donut, so like it's totally fine to have that stuff, and then I just try and get my other you know snacks and all that stuff and my my diet fiber cokes. That's what's life's. That's to pay your 30 fiber cokes. That's what life is all about.
Speaker 1:It's okay, next time I go to peru I'll bring you back some coca leaves I mean, listen, I'm joking, but I'm not joking.
Speaker 2:I'll give you my address I can't imagine like just chewing on the leaf. It's got to just be like a little bit of like a stimulant right, Just like that little bit of a just like. Ok, I'm good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they use it for when they're going up to higher altitudes that you want it.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, because if you're like hiking and shit, like you're going up and you're like going all day, a little bit of cocaine, just like the tiniest bit of cocaine, like not like you know, you know distilled, and like you're doing all that extra stuff, just chew just you know living life, chewing a little bit of the leaves. Is it legal there? Is it? I mean like, do they like try and get people to stop or are they just like nah, this is just what we do, man.
Speaker 1:If you go, like we went to Rainbow Mountains and they were just handing it out, it's like here have some coca leaves.
Speaker 2:That's so cool, man. Drugs are cool is basically what I'm trying to say. Caffeine, coca leaves, Listen, in moderation. What we always say to you is drugs in moderation. I mean we say caffeine, you know, limited to this many milligrams or whatever. So we are telling you to do drugs in moderation.
Speaker 1:I mean. A lot of people forget that caffeine is a drug.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and so as long as you do it in moderation, it's not only, not only drugs are OK If women are. Ok in certain instances, like caffeine, drugs in moderation are actually good for your health. We're a health podcast, right. We talk about healthy things and helping people with that.
Speaker 1:It's after dark, anything goes.
