Your bags are packed, your itinerary is made, but do you have your snacks ready? Here are the best travel snacks you can pack on your next trip.
Snacks for your travel day are one of the most important items to consider when you travel. Whether you’re taking a plane, train, or automobile, you want to make sure you’ve got the right snacks to keep you full and happy and ready to deal with whatever your travel day might throw your way.
If you’re traveling with kids, snacks are even more important! Travel days can be a lot for kids, but snacks will be your best friend. Pack the amount of snacks you think you need, then double it! When in doubt, shove a snack at your kid on travel day!
Ok, so now that I’ve told you how important travel snacks are, it’s time to get into what I consider to be the best travel snacks. These are portable, mess-free, fill me up, and make me happy. If they sound good to you too, pick a few for your next travel day!
Best Travel Snacks
PB&J sandwich
You never know when you’re going to need a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when you’re traveling. Seriously, I never go on a trip without at least one sandwich per family member in my bag. I’ve eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the car when the only food around is a gas station hot dog, on a plane stuck on the tarmac, and in the airport when all the lines are an hour long. It’s the perfect emergency meal because it is cheap, shelf-stable, contains protein to fill your belly, and can be taken through TSA without issue. If you or a family member can’t have peanuts, simply swap the peanut butter out for a different butter. Sun Butter, WOWBUTTER, or almond butter are all great alternatives.
Fresh fruit/veggie
The trouble with travel food that’s available for purchase is that it’s often heavy. Fresh fruits and vegetables are hard to come by. That makes fresh fruits and veggies great additions to my list of best travel snacks.
Now, not all fruits and vegetables are created equal when it comes to being good travel snacks. Pick fruits and vegetables that don’t need to be refrigerated and that aren’t messy to eat. My top picks are grapes on the fruit side and baby carrots on the veggie side, but other good options include clementines, apples, baby bell peppers, and sugar snap peas.
Dried fruit
Dried fruit ranks super high on my kids’ list of best travel snacks! They love conventional dried fruit like raisins (or yogurt raisins), freeze dried fruit of any variety (especially bananas and strawberries), and fun dried fruit like apple chips. Whatever dried fruit you or your kids like is great!
Trail mix
If you want some dried fruit with some extra stuff added to it, then trail mix is the travel snack for you! It’s really another perfect travel snack. You get protein from the nuts and seeds, a little sweet from dried fruit or chocolate, some salt, some crunch. It’s really a one-stop shop!
Meat sticks
My husband and my kids love meat sticks when we travel. They love the taste and the way they fill up their bellies. Mom loves how little space they take in the snack bag. Even though I only eat them when I’m desperate, I still think they serve a place on the list of best travel snacks.
Salty snacks
Part of the reason you need great snacks when you travel is because a travel day can be pretty boring. You’re often stuck in a seated position for far too long and your options for entertainment are limited (yes, even if you have a library of things to watch at the ready). Snacks can help bust this boredom, especially if they’re poppable. I’ve found that salty poppable snacks are the best travel snacks to help you pass the time. I’ve got lots of favorites – let’s talk about them!
Popcorn
I’m not a huge popcorn eater, but I love it when I’m traveling. It’s low in calories, high in fiber, and much lighter than most of the other poppable salty snacks. Which of course means you can eat more!
Pretzels
Pretzels are another great poppable salty travel snack. I don’t know why, but I especially like the sticks when I’m traveling. The plain ones are great, but if I can find a flavored pretzel stick situation, that’s snack heaven.
Goldfish
Just like I don’t travel without a PB&J, I also don’t travel without a bag of Goldfish crackers. We always always always had Goldfish when we traveled as a kid, so it feels like an absolute necessity now that I’m packing the bag of travel snacks. I mean, they just hit the spot sometimes, so they are worth the space they occupy.
Peanut butter crackers
I love to bring packages of peanut butter crackers with us when we travel. They’re great when I’m traveling alone, but they’re even better when we are traveling as a family because we can all munch on one snack. Each package contains six crackers, which usually means that each kid gets two and each parent gets one. Everyone has a little something and is happy enough to keep on keeping on.
One tip that I learned from my son is that the peanut butter crackers with the butter crackers are better for travel than the Toast Chee crackers with the cheese crackers. The Toast Chee crackers tend to get absolutely everywhere when you bite into them, leaving you and the seat covered in tiny orange pieces. It’s not a good look.
Bars
Like many modern families, we have approximately 17 different types of bars in our house at any given time. We have protein bars, granola bars, breakfast bars, nut bars, and meal replacement bars of all different flavors. Because we are so used to consuming bars in our everyday lives, of course we’re going to bring them on the road with us too. But not all bars are created equal when it comes to how they fare as a travel snack. Some are definitely better than others.
Lara bars
Lara bars are always my choice when I’m eating a bar, but that’s especially true when I’m traveling. They do a great job at satisfying your hunger when you can’t access a real meal, but they don’t have that fake taste that some meal replacement bars have because they’re made with real food. One tip, though, is to skip the chocolate Lara bars. They have a tendency to melt when they’re in a bag for too long and nobody wants to deal with the mess of melted chocolate on a long travel day.
NutriGrain bars
We also often travel with NutriGrain bars. Look, no one is pretending that NutriGrain bars are healthy, but everyone loves them and they can act as a light breakfast in a pinch. Hopefully you can find a flavor your whole family can agree on. We all have a different favorite flavor, but we can all get behind the strawberry ones.
Sweet snacks
What is a travel day without sugar? When I was a kid, we would stop at Walgreens the day before we left on a trip to stock up on candy. It was an absolute free-for-all. We got gummy worms and M&Ms and peach rings and Hot Tamales and whatever else struck our fancy. It was a fun way to start off a trip and I’m sure my mom would say that the candy came in handy at hour 12 of our 15-hour drives.
But if you’re not a candy person, there are plenty of sweet snacks that aren’t candy that make my list of best travel snacks. We often bring Teddy Grahams or animal crackers as a poppable sweet option. And if I can get my life together before we leave, I love to bake a pan of brownies and pack them in individual portions to bring on a travel day. Sometimes you just need something sweet, so do yourself a favor and pack a sweet snack!
Other posts
Need more travel tips? Here are some posts that might be helpful:
What makes your list of the best travel snacks? Share down below or over on Instagram @sarainseason. I’m always looking for more snacks!