View Full Version : Thru-Hiking Diet/Nutrition Questions
tstanley
03-17-2011, 08:45
Hey everyone,
I'm a junior at the University of Vermont working on my thesis. Last year I hiked the Long Trail with a high school friend, and it was on that trip that I got the idea to do my senior thesis on backpacking nutrition. As any experienced hiker knows, food is one of the most important aspects of a hike. We need it to move, we think about it with every step, and it is one of the leading topics for cabin discussion.
I'm working on creating a survey for distance backpackers from the nation's major trails in order to figure out what is being eaten, why certain foods/methods are chosen, and eventually plan on analyzing the responses in order to gain a nutritional understanding of hikers diets.
So here we go, if you have the time/want to help, post away! Right now I'm looking for:
1. How consistent was your diet? How much variability? 2. What was your regular on trail diet (be as vague as top 5 foods or as specific as what you ate each meal) 3. What was most important in deciding the foods you brought (weight, cost, taste, size, nutritional quality, etc.)
Answer all of the questions or whichever ones you want. Or just add your own insights/comments.
Thanks so much!
1. How consistent was your diet? How much variability?
If didn't vary hugely, but did vary somewhat based on (a) occasional desire to change things for variety, but much more importantly (b) availability.
For the latter, there's a combination of food mailed from home and food bought along the way in trail towns, often (depending on the particular trail town and trail) from quite limited stores, such as gas station mini-marts.
Given a real, good sized food store, I didn't tend to vary my diet a lot, but would of course change the main meal selections somewhat, and tend to go for different "bread items". If I got some dehydrated refried beans in a resupply box, I might incline more towards tortillas, otherwise perhaps to bagels or something else.
But personally I like to keep food pretty simple, so the basics of what I would get were generally the same.
2. What was your regular on trail diet (be as vague as top 5 foods or as specific as what you ate each meal) 3. What was most important in deciding the foods you brought (weight, cost, taste, size, nutritional quality, etc.)
Breakfast and lunch and snacks mostly the same things: Gorp, dried fruit, jerky, trail bars. Add some sort of breakfast shake when available (protein shake if from home, else just packages of "hot chocolate mix" (already has the milk mixed in unlike so-called breakfast shakes in the cereal aisle) drunk cold.
Dinner: ramen or Knorr side dish or rice dish or the like, or rehydrated mashed potatos, always with a bit of olive oil, and typically TVP for protein. Just stuff that requires hot water, no "cooking".
Lots of crystal light or the equivalent. Definitely a big candy bar with every dinner.
A vitamin and omega 3 fish oil pill once a day.
Note that on all long trails, the food you eat in town is very significant, both to make up for some on-trail caloric deficit, and for variety (not just taste but also nutrition). I always eat fresh fruit, always eat a yoghurt in town, that sort of thing.
Oops, missed one:
"3. What was most important in deciding the foods you brought (weight, cost, taste, size, nutritional quality, etc.)"
All of those plus availability --- thru-hikers get good at making do with sometimes limited selection. Hard to prioritize these --- has to be tasty enough that I'll actually eat it, and want to carry it, calorically dense enough that I can't save significant weight and/or bulk by carrying something else, and I have to get the basics of protein, fat, carbohydrates.
But in fact nutrition is likely something that suffers here, again, based on sort of "making up" in trail towns. One tries to get some basic amount of protein --- fats are rarely a problem --- and after that it's just making sure there are enough calories in there.
1. How consistent was your diet? How much variability?
Over the course of the hike there was great variability. I started trying to be healthy (home-dehydrated veggies, real lentils etc) and ended up giving up on that and eating very poorly, completely astonished that it did not seem to affect me in the least.
2. What was your regular on trail diet (be as vague as top 5 foods or as specific as what you ate each meal)
For the last couple months my diet consisted mainly of cookies, candy and crackers. A typical day:
Breakfast: 1 cup of Grapenuts with powdered Nido with freeze-dried Just fruits and walnuts or pecans. Or Fig newtons or bars that had oats as the main ingredient rather than soy protein.
2nd Breakfast: Cookies. Most things are really just cookies if you think about it.
Lunch: If lucky, crackers and hummus. If not so lucky, a spoon full of peanut butter or two and crackers. Once a week, a whole 4-serving packet of instant pudding with cookies.
Snack: More crackers, or more cookies, or candy.
Dinner: Pasta with alfredo sauce packet and chunks of cheese. Once a week add a foil packet of tuna. Sometimes cous-couse with mayo, tuna, curry, pecans and raisins. Candy, usually gummy bears or chocolate, for desert.
3. What was most important in deciding the foods you brought (weight, cost, taste, size, nutritional quality, etc.)
1. Whatever was available in the market
2. Being able to eat the food while walking and being able to eat while wearing a mosquito head net. For almost two months I could not eat sitting down because of mosquitoes or rain.
3. The food should not melt. I gave up chocolate for a very long time after eating too many giant Hershey bars with a spoon.
Pretty consistent. Breakfast was Instant breakfast (with Nido when available)and some type of bar. Snacks (morning and afternoon) were: gorp, snickers, jerky. Lunch was PB (or PB & J) on a bagel or tortilla. Dinner was Knorrs pasta with tuna or chicken (gave up on the tuna in Va.) or mac and cheese, plus dried fruit and candy (loved the livesaver gummi things). Used olive oil for flavor + calories. Stuck to this pretty consistently but varied at times due to availability. Dehydrated meals were a treat (Mountain House or whomever). Depended on towns for variety and fruits/vegetables. Most important purchasing decision was the calorie vs. weight ratio.
1) find something that fits your nutritional needs and stick with it until you get sick of it. Also, candy is great.
2) cooking is a hastle: granola bars, dried fruit and meat, and gorp
3) calorie heavy food that tasted good