Cruising & dieting……..do they mix?

You can tell its January in our house! Bacon has been replaced with Special K , chocolate seems to have disappeared and the wine rack is bursting…..with sparkling water!  Yes its definitely January, my wife is dieting AGAIN and that means I have to too. Did you have an over indulgent Christmas, (honestly, who doesn’t), and now your about to go on a cruise?  Well , fear not you can eat low fat and healthy on your cruise.

I’ve been looking into it , and here is what I have found.  The number of places to eat on board cruise ships can be overwhelming and can lead to some serious over indulgence. However, the tide is slowly beginning to turn with more lines offering healthy eating options. On a cruise there is the chance to eat your way around the world with full cooked breakfasts, full-on lunches, mind blowing dinners, and midnight buffets. The temptation to overeat is enormous and with an ever increasing choice of restaurants, cafes, pizza stands, hot-dog counters, chocolate fountains, room service you can literally eat on board 24 hours a day. But the tide is turning and cruise lines have latched on to healthy eating and made real efforts to encourage customers to eat and live more healthily while on board.

• Crystal Cruises became one of the pioneers of healthy eating when in 2007, it became the first line to implement dishes free of transfats. It’s menus offer dishes low in salt, fat, sugar and cholesterol, catering for dietary needs that include diabetic and gluten-free.
• Princess Cruises are happy to meet your request for low-sodium, low-fat, low-sugar and vegetarian diets. P&O Cruises and Holland America Line highlights healthy ‘light’ options on its menus.
•  Avalon Waterways, colour-codes its breakfast buffet to show items that are low calorie, low cholesterol, low fat, high fibre and high energy.
• NCL have sushi bars and restaurants where fresh ingredients are cooked to order. Special meals are available, including low calorie, vegetarian, gluten-free, no-MSG, low-/no-sodium and low-/no-cholesterol meals, as well as sugar-free and fat-free desserts and kosher meals. Requests for special diets should have been made at the time of booking and at least two months before departure.
• Oceania Cruises has teamed up with Canyon Ranch Health Resorts to offer special ‘spa cuisine’ with the number of calories, plus fat and fibre content helpfully listed against each dish.
• Celebrity Cruises took the concept one stage further with the launch of Celebrity Solstice and its new Solstice-class ships which have a dedicated restaurant called Blu. This is reserved only for passengers staying in the spa cabins and serves so-called ‘clean cuisine’ which focuses on grilled meats served with light sauces.

Anyway I am starving and going to raid the cupboards, she must have left something in there! If you have any other New Year resolutions you want to tell me about , or special dietry requests for your forthcoming cruise, you can email me at [email protected] or call me on 0800 408 6107.    Happy New Year!