Snickers were there with me on day one, but I had long since abolished a number of other food items from my pack, including Clif bars, Knorr Pasta Sides, and beef jerky, among others. Though I never sprung for tuna pouches out of a personal taste aversion, I would have to say I noticed fewer and fewer hikers carrying them as the miles wore on.
My reasons for abandoning particular foods usually hinged on cost or weight. I knew both of these factors were important, but I had trouble comparing foods that were heavy and cheap (like Pasta Sides) to foods that were light and expensive (like beef jerky). Toward the end of my hike, I came up with a solution. Dividing the caloric content of a food by its cost times its weight yielded a number that would allow me to definitively choose between any two foods in the same store.
I called this number the "moby" (pl. mobies) after my trail name, "Moby's Dick," though I the actual unit would be the calorie per dollar-ounce or cal/$*oz for short. Below are some common trail foods and their moby scores at Wal-mart:
Food | Trail Serving Size* | Cal / Serving | $ / Serving | oz / Serving | Mobies |
Little Debbie's Cosmic Brownies | 1 brownie | 300 | 0.29 | 2.19 | 472.366556447804 |
Peanut Butter | 1.13 oz | 190 | 0.43 | 1.13 | 391.026960279893 |
Ramen | 1 package | 371 | 0.4 | 3 | 309.166666666667 |
Bear Naked Regular Granola | 1.1 oz | 140 | 0.44 | 1.1 | 289.256198347107 |
Blueberry Pop-tarts | 2 pastries* | 400 | 0.5 | 3.53 | 226.628895184136 |
Snickers | 1 bar | 250 | 0.6 | 1.86 | 224.014336917563 |
Chocolate Chip Clif Bar | 1 bar | 230 | 1.1 | 2.4 | 87.1212121212121 |
Teriyaki Pasta Side | 1 container | 750 | 1.67 | 6.98 | 64.3412315769607 |
Mountain House Beef Stroganoff | 1 package | 620 | 5.4 | 4.87 | 23.5759373336375 |
Jack Links Regular Beef Jerky | 1 oz | 80 | 4 | 1 | 20 |
Starkist Tuna Packet | 1 package | 180 | 1.7 | 6.4 | 16.5441176470588 |
(See attachment for graph)
Before we go any further, it's important to understand the limitations of the moby. First of all, mobies are relative, not absolute. Because prices vary from store to store, the precise magnitude of a food's moby score is irrelevant. All that matters is whether a given moby score is higher or lower than another. As a result, one can use mobies to compare two different foods in the same store, or the same food in two different stores, but not two different foods in two different stores. This isn't really a problem for thru-hikers, who typically make one stop at Dollar General or Wal-mart for resupply.
Second, mobies ignore protein content and other essential nutrients. Calories may be king on the trail, but one must not forget the importance of protein in the hiker diet. This means mobies alone can't determine your trail diet. However, the unit can be used to determine which of two equally high-protein foods is the better buy.
Third, mobies tell us nothing about what quantity of food we should purchase. For example, you'd need to eat just over two packets of Ramen to equal the calories in just one Pasta Side. Fortunately, Ramen's higher moby score means any number of calories of Ramen will always be cheaper or lighter (or both) than the equivalent number of calories of Pasta Side.
But enough about limitations, let's do some analysis. One of the things I find most interesting about the above chart is its ability to predict my change in diet over time. Though I had yet to invent the moby system, experience buying, carrying, and eating different foods on the trail led me to choose foods as if I had known their moby scores. Likewise, experience led me away from relatively expensive and weight-inefficient foods like beef jerky. Peanut butter, which in addition to being a good source of protein also happens to be a good source of calories, became my beef jerky substitute. The chart also explains why hikers ditch tuna pouches over time and may shed light on why I fluctuated early on from Ramen to Pasta Sides (I got tired of the taste...), and back to Ramen again (...but they're just so darn light and about 60% cheaper).
I offer the moby to aspiring thru-hikers desperately trying to figure out what to eat on the trail because I know what it's like to be in those shoes. Conventional wisdom led me to start off with Clif bars and beef jerky as major staples, both clearly unsustainable food choices. I hope knowledge of the moby can help others avoid making similar mistakes. I know it won't work for every diet, and I know there will be people who are completely turned off by the idea of eating peanut butter-filled Cosmic Brownie Pop-tart sandwiches every day for six months, but if all you care about are calories, the moby can be a powerful tool for keeping food costs and weight low -- perhaps two of the most crucial considerations in planning a thru-hike. Please contribute to the discussion by running a moby analysis on your own trail foods and posting in the comments.
Happy trails!
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