I had no idea what to take for food the first time I jumped into backpacking. I took an eclectic mix of stuff, some of it, like powdered eggs, added at the last minute to reach a calorie goal. I’ll never know if it would have worked because I got myself pulled out at the fifteen mile mark and came up with a more simple system. During this first foray, I did learn that PB-cheese crackers are too dry and peanut butter and oatmeal are too cloying for me. What you will eat backpacking is somewhat different than what you want to eat back in civilization. Only way to know what you like for backpacking is to go backpacking. Trust me, take some meat sticks and Snickers bars. In 2018 I met a guy that couldn’t stomach any of the “healthy” crap he brought from Trader Joe’s. I traded him meat sticks for dried mango. He devoured the meat sticks and I’m certain the energy from them was what allowed him to make it to the next extraction point.
One thing for sure, backpacking changes your mind and makes you discard the general societal messaging about vegetables being so healthy compared to red meat, fat and Snickers bars. Low calorie vegetables are useless for backpacking. Red meat (e.g. Slim Jims), fat (e.g. olive oil, lard) and Snickers bars are staples for me for backpacking. My goal is to maximize calories per ounce since pack weight is critical. I always seem to get to max out at an average around 110 calories per ounce. Tuna and chicken are useless from a caloric point of view at around only twenty-five calories per ounce. I need some variety, so I “weight-splurge” on lower calorie tuna packets that include a high calorie density oil like olive or sunflower. For those of you in horror of my politically incorrect stance on vegetables, perhaps you’ll feel I’m not completely ruining my life to know that my typical backpacking lunch includes a hummus burrito. But, I can’t leave you vegan-PETA-Sierra club people too much at ease – From what I understand, I could live a full and healthy life just eating red meat, Snickers bars and a B12 supplement. Go ahead, try to find data that proves I’m wrong. On the other side, I would probably die in a year of starvation if I tried to eat just raw vegan.
Anyway… after my initial backpacking attempt in July 2017, I changed my entire backpacking food outlook during my refit.
1) I went mostly no cook 2) I went KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).
That means I went to a standard daily menu with just a little variation:
- Breakfast: Clif Bar
- Mid-morning: Clif bar
- Lunch: Spam or tuna in oil packet and a hummus burrito
- Afternoon: Clif protein bar
- Dinner: Chicken ramen or meat sticks or Chilorio*
- After dinner: A Snickers bar** and mixed nuts
This is only enough food if you have body fat reserves or are going much less than twenty miles a day.
*Chata Chilorio is shredded pork cooked in lard, available only from Wal-mart.
**I cannot eat a honey bun (a thru-hiker high-calorie staple) or a Snickers bar during hiking because my body reacts with extreme lethargy. Most people I’ve met on the trail are not like this.
Backpacking and Life 