Food on the trail

When you're walking the equivalent of a marathon a day, staying healthy and nourished is a must. You have to eat a large number of calories, and even then, you can expect to lose weight along the trail. But the majority of what I've heard from past hikers is that their diet consists of largely peanut butter, snicker bars, jerky, and poptarts - not exactly the healthiest meal. And when they arrive in town, they eat massive quantities of fast food. While I'm sure I'll engage in some of this behavior, I'd like to avoid large amounts of sugar in my diet, which means I'll have to plan ahead. And the healthier you eat on the trail, the healthier you'll eat in town, so I won't vacillate between rationing food and bingeing. As a vegetarian, I have to be prepared that some trail towns won't have the best options. Therefore, I'll be sending some resupply packages along the way, which I detail in a previous post.

General tips

One of the most important things in food choices with backpacking is what's called 'caloric density,' that is, calories per unit of weight. The higher the caloric density, the less weight you need to carry to make a full meal. Protein also matters - that's what's going to keep your muscles working as you trek long miles every day.

On trail, you can either go the traditional route and bring a stove to cook all your food, or ditch the stove and do what's called 'cold soaking.' A lot of food will re-hydrate pretty easily, so you can stick in a jar (most people use Talenti gelato containers) and wait a bit to eat. Personally, I really value hot meals at the end of the day - particularly in the Sierras and Washington - so the extra weight of a stove is worth it to me.

Regardless of meal preparation technique, there seem to be three general methods of eating while on trail:

• Buy foods in town

• Mail yourself foods you bought

• Mail yourself foods you prepared

I think I'll likely do a combination of these. Buying food can add up - most towns are fairly expensive - and can be unpredictable in towns with limited offerings. This leads to people buying whatever food is available, which will likely not be particularly healthy. Mailing yourself resupply boxes lets you have more control over your diet, but it can also be pricey to send boxes. If you're sending yourself the same foods you bought beforehand, it's also likely you'll get completely sick of it before the trail's done. A variation of this is buying food at a well-stocked trail town and mailing it to a future stop on the trail - that way, you have more control over the kind of food you want to have. And the final option of preparing food allows you to have complete control over your diet, and introduce more diversity and nutrients, but can be time consuming. Most people that prepare foods own a dehydrator and will make mixes of curries, vegetable soups, bean dishes, and lots of trail snacks. If going this route, you can mix things up with every supply by using different vegetables and spices, more so than any premade meal.

As I mention more in my Resupply post, I'm planning to do a bit of all three. In towns where there's a wide variety of resupply options, I'll buy everything there. But in towns with high prices and limited choices, I'll be mailing a box, which will include both homemade and purchased meals.

Food Specifics

This list is mostly for my benefit, but here's the main foods I'm planning on sending myself and finding in stores. Some of them are repeated if they work for multiple meals.

Some of these are also from premade trail dinners, from companies like Backpacker's Pantry, Outdoor Herbivore, Food for the Sole, Wild Zora, Good-to-go, Alpine Aire, and Trailtopia. They're what I often use when backpacking currently, but I know the price will add up if I want to buy a lot. So I'll probably add one or two to each resupply box and try to recreate some myself. If I don't have time to dehydrate foods myself, then I'll also try to purchase some mixed vegetable bags, like Karen's Naturals and Harmony House.

Also, there's some potentially surprising items, like cheese or avocados. Hard, sharp cheddar can last about two weeks on trail if its kept towards the bottom of the back, and avocados keep shockingly well. Apples also keep well, though they're not the most calorically dense. I've also considered a technique called trail sprouting - using a hemp bag to grow microgreens as you hike. It sounds fairly easy and very tempting to have fresh greens more frequently.

Breakfast

• Oatmeal

• Energy bars (cliff, luna, kind, pemmican)

• Granola

• Cheerios

• Dehydrated hash browns

• Poptarts

• Peanut butter

• Corn grits

• Powdered milk - NIDO brand has fat

• Powdered heavy cream - more calories

Lunch

• Ramen

• Tofu

• Tortillas and cheese

• Pita bread and powdered hummus

• Energy bars

• Bagel

• Pasta

• Vegan jerky

• Peanut butter

• Polenta (soak while hiking)

• Instant potatoes

• Trail mix

Dinner

• Bean stew

• Ramen

• Polenta

• Rice

• Refried beans

• Instant potatoes

• Lentils

• Couscous

• Pasta

• Three bean chili

• Chana masala

• Red beans and rice

• Pumpkin soup

• Vegetable mix

Snacks

• Energy bars

• Trail mix (nuts, etc)

• Dried fruit (apple, mango, apricot)

• Energy chews + gels

• Sesame snaps

• Fruit snacks

• Wheat thins

• Honey stingers

• Love corn

• Cheese

• Snickers

• Nutella

• M&ms

Luxury

• Apple

• Avocado

• Carrots

• Onion

• Garlic

• Snap peas

For most fruit/veggies, store in a slightly open ziploc with a damp paper towel. Best to store in pot or hard cased container where they'll last for a couple days.

Drinks

• Powdered apple cider

• Hot choc

• Natural vitality calm

• Powdered lemonade

• Powdered gatorade

• Nuun hydration tablets

• Gu electrolytes

• Electrolyte powders

Flavoring

• Olive oil - add to every meal for calories

• Powdered onions

• Powdered butter

• Pasta sauce packets (pesto, alfredo)

• Taco seasoning

• Salt

• Protein powder

• Curry spices

• Italian spices

Of these foods, some are probably better choices than others. Food is going to be HEAVY - the rule of thumb is 2 pounds per day. Water is worse, being over 2 pounds per liter, and you need about 1L per 5 miles. So on the first 20 miles day of a 5 day food carry, you could be looking at over 20 extra pounds to carry. I want to be as smart as I can about food, but also it also matters that I am both eating healthy and enjoying what I'm eating. So at the end of the day, a little extra weight is worth it to be a bit more comfortable. I'm hoping that by getting my base weight to around 15 pounds I can take on the extra weight that good nutrition costs. Of the food listed above, here's how some of them measure up in terms of grams of protein and calories for a one ounce serving size. The ones I think are particularly good are shaded.

Food	Calories/ounce	Protein g/oz
Peanut butter	167	7
Oatmeal	120	4.2
Hash browns	200	2.8
Poptarts	100.6	0.04
Ramen	124	3
Tortilla	88	2.4
Pasta	38	1.5
Pita bread	78	2.6
Dehydrated beans	83	6.7
Polenta	130	3
Dehydrated potatoes	100	2.3
Bean stew	100	3.9
Chana Masala	108	3.5
Lentils	160	11
Extra sharp cheddar	110	7
Rice	112	2.3
Corn grits	17	0.2
Trail mix	140	4
Nutella	200	2
Sesame snaps	150	3.6
Rice krispies	110	2
M&ms	140	3
Avocado	47	0.5
Dried apples	69	0.3
Powdered milk	144	7.5
Energy gels	91	0
Love corn	120	2
Dried mangoes	28	0
Snickers	250	4