Better Eats
May 2009 42 TrucKers News F or many truckers, eating on the road can be a nightmare. The convenience of a truckstop can eas-ily become an unhealthy trap for the driver who values fast and easy over good for you. Pam Whitfield and Don Jacob-son, hosts of the Sirius XM show Roadcookin', tackle truckers' eating habits in their new book, cookin': A Long Haul Driver's Guide to . The book addresses struggles long-haulers face manag-ing weight, heart health and related issues, serving as a nutritional guide to easy ways to improving overall health. Our research shows that 86 percent of truckers are overweight, while 55 percent are obese, says Whitfield, a registered dietitian, compared to statistics reported by the Centers for Disease Control that state that Americans are 66 percent overweight and 33 percent obese. Whitfield says this news for the more than 3 million OTR truckers ranks as a crisis with the potential of worsening if nothing's done. Whit-field's coauthor Don Jacobson, author of a number of outdoor cookbooks, including , says while there is no shortage of adver-tised quick fixes to truckers' weight problems, the fix may not be as healthy as it appears. These ads may be light on your wallet, but they won't fix any problems long-term, Jacobson says. Both Whitfield and Jacobson want to serve as a tool to show truckers that becoming healthy can't result from such a fix; it's something that takes time but is worth it in the end. Toward that end, encourages modified meal plans along with recipes designed for in-cab preparation. The book also features a 28-day meal plan of menus and shopping lists. All recipes are writ-ten as a single serving and include nutritional information. Our target was to build meal plans that anyone could cook in a lunch-box oven, slow cooker or fry pan and end up with around 2,000 calories per day, Jacobson says. Whitfield says eating regular, moderately sized meals is the key to becoming healthy. Lots of truckers eat one big meal a day, she says. We encourage eating three meals a day. In fact, the number one cause of Type 2 diabetes is not eating regu-larly throughout the day. One thing truckers may not real-ize, Whitfield says, is many truck-stop restaurants serve items that are grilled, a much healthier option than fried. The only problem, she says, is that truckers neglect to ask for their food this way. Just ask them and they will be happy to accommodate, she says. is $16.99 and is avail-able through or . Readers of are eligible for a $2 discount at the book's main site; just enter the code TNEWS. For more information, email . Better Eats New book for truckers features tips, recipes for healthier lifestyle By Laura Pitts comes from the hosts of the Sirius XM show of the same name. to point out, and his work fills an important niche in scholarship on the bombs. But for Coster-Mullen, who turned 62 last December, the opportunity to interact with indi-vidual readers lends further mean-ing to his ongoing project now tooled toward making certain his work reaches those who can appreci-ate its historical value. s ince the story was published, Coster-Mullen's home time is in large part dedi-cated to filling orders. I've filled orders from all 50 states and some foreign countries, he says. A recent one came from a navy sailor on a Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine. With the letter Coster-Mullen sent along with his book, he included three mementoes. The first was a piece of stone harvested by me in 2005 from the center of Able Runway, he wrote, on the island of Tinian, from which the World War II atomic missions were launched. If Paul Tibbets and Chuck Sweeney were the great pilots they always told us they were, then the wheels of their B-29s probably passed over this very stone on their way into history that early August in 1945. The other two mementoes were links to the present, given to Coster-Mullen by his son, Jason, a former air force sergeant who worked as a civilian contractor in Iraq a keychain medallion from the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and a piece of shrapnel, Coster-Mullen wrote, that Jason picked up after a rocket/ mortar explosion in Baghdad. Since you share the same danger and pro-tect us from our enemies, I included this so you will have a direct con-nection to this conflict, which to you must seem very far away.