Food ideas for section- and thru-hiking

[smokymtnsteve]

doesn't matter if your convinced or not MS...

what U think is really of no consequence to the truth,

I am saying this from my heart and with love and compassion one human being to another,

MS you need some serious psychological help. it is quite evident from your ranting and raving, seriously man get some help.

Back away from the computer MS and go out and take a real hike, you'll feel much better.

[rickb]

Fat is good. Luis L'Amour had a good bit on "Rabbit Starvation" in Last of the Breed. Basically if you eat just high protien rabbits you die for lack of fat. Something to consider?

[schwenkler]

I have heard, and this may be no more true than what Minnesotta Smith suggested, that losing lean muscle mass has more to do with how many calories a hiker eats than with protein.

The theory is, a long distance hiker burns 6000 calories a day and eats far less than that, even with town splurges and high fat foods. His calorie depleted body, over time, burns virtually all of its spare fat (think of a NOBOs in NH and ME, if you're ever seen one) and starts using muscle for food, because it's the last food source available.

[smokymtnsteve]

yep...that's about right.

[Teatime]

Man, how did Earl Schaeffer ever make it back in 1948!? Hiking isn't rocket science, right? It does require some common sense and practical experience but Minnesottasmith, you've got to be kidding about all this food! I've seen grocery stores that don't have that much stocked! And who has time to prepare elaborate meals after hiking for 8 or 9 hours a day? Sorry, Minnesotta, I think you need to stop planning things to death and over analyzing everything. Listen to the experienced folks on this forum. They have been there, done that and got the T-shirt.

As for me.....For dinner I usually take Mountain House dinners, Lipton Rice/Pasta meals and Ramen (the good Korean kind, not the bland stuff you get in the supermarkets). I usually eat Pop Tarts or Bagels with Peanut Butter for breakfast. Tortillas with Peanut Butter ain't too bad either. I like to take along some beef jerky to snack on because I really crave the salt. Of course, who can leave out the obligatory Snickers bars and Little Debbie Oatmeal Pies (the big ones!). Despite eating all this junk food, I usually loose around 5 - 8 lbs on a week long trip. Okay, so I've only done 2 sections but, hey, I lost the weight on both of them.

PEACE!

[Nightwalker]

i take ALL freeze-dried entrees...just add boiling water...you'd be surprised how great they taste NOW!

You'd probably be surprised how much you like stuff that you or a significant stay-at-home dehydrates for you. My first reaction at trying a new combination that I've put together is almost always WOW! This is good!

Earlier this week I went on a 3-day and had some brown rice with peas, carrots and summer sausage, some black beans, brown rice and breakfast sausage, some amazing organic granola made from rolled oats, honey, sunflower kernels, walnuts and almonds and some really good chinese take home that I had dehydrated. I also make "real" (not instant) oatmeal on the trail. It's easy with a pot cozy. Add brown sugar, powdered milk, butter-salt and raisins and your energy level goes way up for a couple of hours. It's usually my second breakfast when I eat it. I've also started messing with TVP, and it's pretty good. It's made from soy flour and is about 2/3 protein. It's easily flavored and pretty cheap. I like a LOT of variety out there.

I think that I may actually eat better on the trail than I do at home.

[chris]

s and Ramen (the good Korean kind, not the bland stuff you get in the supermarkets).

Finally! Someone else who values a good ramen! Very difficult to get Seafood and Spicy on the AT, but I've found it in a couple of places on the PCT.

Calories are important, and the source is also important, which is what MS was trying to get at. I think he put too much importance on the source, but that is just my opinion based on my own experiences and observations. When I saw a hiker (who had come up from Springer) in Virginia pop open one tray of a microwave dinner (beef stew) and heat it up on his stove, I really had to laugh. The thing weighed like 10 oz and packed something like 200 calories. That was his only meal, nothing else. No snacks. No dessert. It wasn't the fact that he was eating crappy beef stew that was the problem. 200 calories of carrots would be just as bad. The problem was that there was too little of it.

[JP]

I have spent hours planning meals and repacking food for hikes and campouts. But while looking for freezdried items I came across the Mountain House 7 day supply sold as a case. It all fits in my Breeze with the collor extended. Its just too easy, no planning just get a box and go. Some outfiters you will pass may order it for you and have it ready to pick up when you pass through. I box from Mountain House and a botle of multi vitamin is my new food list.
But I can still put together whatever I want from small stores, so I still play with new recipies.

[minnesotasmith]

1) Spirit Walker is no doubt correct that much of the healthy stuff you're accustomed to eating that is in your local large grocery store WON'T be in a mini-mart in BFE, Virginia. IMO, that means that for hikers who want to eat healthily, either making strategic use of maildrops, or stocking up past the next 3 days on some critical high-nutrition item when you have the chance, would be a wise thing to do.

2) Chris, I don't for a second deny that any hiker going through many more calories than he takes in will start catabolizing his muscle. It's like with a car; it needs gas AND oil AND transmission fluid AND brake fluid, etc.; leave out any of them long enough, and eventually there will be a problem, guaranteed.

3) Smoky, please get someone to help you work through understanding that ideas have consequences, that if a concept routinely produces evil, it is evil, no matter how good it makes you feel. I can't say what would work for you, other it being neccesary to lay off reading the liberal/socialist circular reasoning writings for a few months you apparently have favored up to now. Try seeing if you can devise responses to logic that blows your positions out of the realm of the morally acceptable without desperately medicalizing people who have access to better information than you do for a few weeks, okay?

4) Rick, I covered "rabbit diarrhea" in my opening post on this thread. Did you read that far?

5) Mr. Ed, I did not advocate bringing "all that stuff" on a hike, let alone all in one packload. It was a list of some ideas I have come up with (originally, or via my reading) that I thought might be of use to some hiking members here who want to eat better on the Trail, while still being practical about it. If someone reads my opening post, and does nothing but any one of getting salmon foil packs in preference to tuna ones, bringing a small plastic bottle of dried parsley along to pour into some meals they cook on the Trail, or coming to understand that cheapo multivitamin pills are not a cure-all for a white-flour/high-sugar/low-vegetable diet, and nothing more, they'll have gotten something worthwhile out of my post.

Think of my opening post as a free buffet of ideas with many items, and you're only a little bit hungry. You don't have to have some of everything for it to have been worth your time.

6) Franklooper has the right idea. Eating well onthe Trail is not impossible, nor not worth doing. (Except for the salt, I make oatmeal almost exactly the same way you do.)

7) Agreed, chris; that hiker with the 200 calorie dinner has a poor hiking food strategy, just from the calorie content and weight issues alone.

[plodder]

Pretty interesting paper on long distance nutrition by a dietician at thruhike.com ? AYCE's site anyway. Me-I just sucked down 8oz of swiss cheese in some bean burritos and the tapeworm says: "Where's she hiding the shredded coconut?" Stale? It won't matter.

[stickman]

MS, what a great post! I've been wanting to start grinding my own grains. Do you know where I can get a Country Living grain mill? The local HF store is no help.

Thanks.

Stickman

[minnesotasmith]

Here's a direct link to a Country Living Grain Mill for sale at walton's (a reasonable, if not spectacular price):

http://waltonfeed.com/country.html

I'd get an extra set of grinding plates at the time of purchase if I were you. Unless you have physical issues or want to grind a LOT of grain, IMO there's no need to motorize it. Bread flour needs running twice IMO.

Here's the link to a page on their site that discusses grain mills. There are direct links to various mills at the bottom.

http://waltonfeed.com/self/grinder.html

The manufacturer: http://www.countrylivinggrainmills.com/

[minnesotasmith]

I just finished a 4 1/2-day section hike on the AT in GA (Amicalola to past Neels). It was going to have been the whole AT in GA, but my boss called me back to work early. I'll pick up where I stopped on my next section hike, natch.

I would add to my suggestions maximizing foods that do not require preparation such as cooking, and using drink powders to encourage drinking. Lots of other hikers I saw made extensive use of Gatorade powder. I was too bushed and busy when not hiking to heat water for tea most days, and never drank enough liquids to get my urine clear while on the Trail, no matter how much I pushed water; the high humidity present most of the time no doubt was a factor due to increased sweating. (I didn't sweat much Sunday night at Jarrad Gap, though; my tiny Coleman thermometer said it was low 40s at dawn, which it felt like.) I'm not completely convinced that the extra salt in Gatorade powder is needed, as many dried foods (jerky, most soup/rice mixes, all freeze-dried foods) have large amounts of salt added. What I would like to find would be powdered orange/grape/tomato juice; they'd have better flavor than Gatorade or Kool-Aid/Wyler's, while containing lots of potassium and negligible sodium.

Also, my appetite was enormously depressed for the first three days, and still wasn't near normal at the end. I did find that keeping GORP ingredients separate as Jardine suggests worked well; I had dried almonds, figs, apricots, dates, raisins, miniature chocolate bars, beef jerky, dried cuttlefish, a can or two of sardines/oysters, and some other things for snacking between camps. I will continue to start off my hikes carrying 8+ PB & J sandwiches (made with extra jelly so easier to swallow).

I'd also like to see more fully burnable packaging; the plastic bags that everything dried seems to come in add up fast.

P.S.: I met aspiring thru-hikers Megapole and Lady Longlegs, who graciously allowed me to take their picture. I first saw them at Jarrad Gap, and we repeatedly crossed paths all the way to Neels Gap. There were two male thrus (not tall, white, dark short hair, some facial hair, 20s) that were around as well, having befriended them, but as they did not yet have trail names, I can't tell you who they were off the top of my head. I also met a section hiker named Robert (going to Mass.) and Alaska Bob, who had some VERY interesting things to say about my proposed Alaska hikes.

[Teatime]

I can identify. During my section hike last Spring from Harpers Ferry south to near the SNP border, I got a little scared one day. It was in the mid 80's that week in April, unseasonably warm and little shade. One day, as I was sweating like a pig, I began to get a sort of metallic taste in my mouth. No other way to describe it. I was also feeling fatigued and a little listless. Although I had been drinking plenty of water I seemed to be flushing out all my minerals. I assumed the metallic taste in my mouth was a warning sign of this, not to mention the salt that was caked on my shirt. I figured my potassium might be getting low. I didn't have gatorade with me but did have some salt tablets in my first aid kit. Normally, I would never take one of them but I did that day. It was amazing how much better I felt afterwards. The metallic taste went away and I had energy again. So, even if I don't take gatorade, I will take a pack of emergency sports drink in my first aid kit, just in case it happens again.

[minnesotasmith]

Go buy one of those salt-substitute bottles in the diet or spice sections of grocery stores. Look on the ingredient list on the back for one that is primarily potassium chloride.

As bananas and oranges are especially high in potassium, unsalted banana chips and dehydrated orange products (NOT Tang/Kool-Aid/Wyler's) would work well also.

[Teatime]

Thanks for the suggestion. Now, about the PBJs...I like PBJs too but what kind of bread do you use? I hate it when the Jelly soaks into the bread. I just usually put PB on Bagels or Flour Tortillas.

[minnesotasmith]

I use any of several 100% whole-wheat brands. I don't care for Wal-Mart store brand or Sara Lee's. I also look at the fiber, protein, and fat content, including sat fat.

[Frosty]

Thanks for the suggestion. Now, about the PBJs...I like PBJs too but what kind of bread do you use? I hate it when the Jelly soaks into the bread. I just usually put PB on Bagels or Flour Tortillas.

I like PB on bagels for lunch. FIrst time I tried it I learned NOT to spread the PB on all the bagels before I left. The PB oil soaked into the bagels and left the PB hard, flakey and unappetising.

[TJ aka Teej]

Man, how did Earl Schaffer ever make it back in 1948!?

Beans, bread, butter, sausage, peanut butter, bacon, eggs, corn bread, flapjacks, canned corn, and apples. In towns he'd occasionaly eat two whole pies, or buy some hamburgers to carry back out to the trail.

[leeki pole]

From a wannabe thru but an experienced marathoner, let me give you a suggestion. I always carry in my key pocket in my running shorts on Long Runs (i.e, 10 miles and up) 5 of those salt containers you get at fast food places. You know, the tubes that crack open at one end. When you feel the need for salt, just pull one out of the ziploc and partake. Hyponatremia is a real concern for any endurance athlete, thrus and LD hikers included, and after a bout with it running an 18 miler in 88 degree temps with 70% humidity, my doc reeducated me about the danger of too little salt. So check with your doc and make sure that you are getting enough to prevent this from occurring.