Quite a few years ago, I decided to make my home in northeast Ohio.  But my folks are still in New Jersey.  So over the past 25 years, I’ve made the trip between Ohio and Jersey at least a hundred times.  This has made me an expert at highway food offerings.  Which is not necessarily a good thing.  A few years ago I started seeing trail mixes among the fast food, doughnuts, potato chips, and pretzels being offered for sale at the highway stops.  For a while, I was trying to figure out why the amount of carbohydrate is so much higher in commercial trail mixes like, for example, Planters Trail Mix (R), than in virtually identical mixes of non-commercial trail mixes that I put together myself.  Yes, that is true.  But why?

I happened to be sitting in a meeting recently, listening to a creative bunch of people solve the latest interesting problem, when somebody mentioned that commercial trail mixes spray their dried fruit with sugar solutions to increase the shelf life.  What!?  Did I hear that right?!  Well, that explains that, doesn’t it!?  You just can’t let your guard down for a minute, can you?!  Even when you try to do the right thing, buy the healthier food, make the smart choice, you’re eating hidden sugar?!  That really frosts me, I gotta tell ya.  Planters also mixes cottonseed oil into their trail mix.  I don’t know anyone whose great-great-grandparents ate cottonseed oil.

So here’s my solution.  I make my own trail mix, and that’s that.  Today I’m going to teach you how.  First, make a list:
1. Choose a nut or two: pecans, walnuts, hazelnuts (filberts), pine nuts, cashews, peanuts, brazil nuts, almonds, macadamia nuts.  Did I miss any?
2. Then choose a seed:  Sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, chia seeds, sesame seeds.
3. Now choose a fruit or two or three:  raisins (gold and dark), apricots, dates, apples, papaya, mango (Trader Joe makes an interesting chili-covered version), bananas, strawberries, pears, pineapple, cranberry.  I know that some of these (especially cranberries) are made with sugar, but you can make your own choice about that.
4. Finally, add small pieces of dark chocolate (or mini-chips) if you don’t plan to put it in a place where the chocolate will melt.  Remember that dark chocolate is good for you.  Avoid “yogurt-covered” raisins and stuff like that.  
5. Now add your choices to the shopping list, and don’t forget to go buy them.  Mix them together in a large bowl, and use a 1/4 cup measure to measure out individual-sized servings into baggies.  A quarter cup may not seem like a lot, but this is real food, and real food is pretty dense.  It will be enough, I promise.  And anyway, if it isn’t, you can just open up another baggie.
6. The next time you make it, vary your mixture slightly so it doesn’t get boring.

If you have a tree nut allergy, use peanuts.  If you are allergic to peanuts, use sunflower and pumpkin seeds.  Lots of options here.  The simplest mix is just peanuts.  The next step would be peanuts and raisins, which is a fantastic combination, by the way.  If you don’t like pineapple, skip it.  If macadamia nuts are ridiculously expensive, ignore them.  This project doesn’t have to be complicated, although you can certainly make it that way if you want to.

If you carry homemade trail mix, you will never find yourself overly hungry and without a smart option.  I put some in my kids’ lunch bags for years.  Toss a few in your car, briefcase, backpack, purse, and/or suitcase.  If you weigh more than 250 lbs., toss in a few more.  If you regularly travel with life partners, business partners, colleagues, friends, children, or teenagers, toss in a few more yet.  

And everyone will thank you for sharing.