How do you get food weight down for an extended hike?

[todd52]

After completely revamping my gear list and reorganizing my gear (still not finished but I got my pack weight down from 25 pounds to only 20) I went out and bought about 10 bags of various trail mixes. When the cashier checked me out and handed me the bag I was immediately disappointed at how much it all weighed and I still have more to get!.

If a person is planning on hiking for 2 weeks continuously with no mail drops/re-supplying but yet still wanted to have enough food for that length of time, what types of food would they take?. I'm assuming there are plenty of places to get water along the trail so maybe small pouches of dried soups, coffee, etc?. Once you start getting into things like peanut butter, nuts, dried fruits, etc I have noticed that the weight really piles on (not to mention the space it takes up) and so it's only natural to want to take less of these items but if you do that then you are having to re-supply in town every few days which is kind of a pain because it breaks your hike up.

So, any suggestions on what type of foods one should take for a 2-week hike without adding lots of weight?. If it isn't possible, then how about a one week hike or one and a half week hike?.

[max patch]

i don't know of anyone who carries 2 weeks worth of food on the AT. A week would generally be the max, and these days 4 days or so is probably closer to the norm (depends on hiking pace, availability of towns, etc.) A perfect week for me would be to hike 6 days and rest on the 7th. I carried 10 days thru the wilderness and had 3-4 days left when I finished. As a practical matter, that 10 days of food was the max my pack could have held.

[todd52]

Thanks, so what exactly would one carry for a week?. Can anyone post a list here?. Would be interesting to see.

[Venchka]

I suggest that you start living on lightweight, no-cook or soak in boiling water cooked food. See what you like. See what gags you. The Cereal section of any well stocked supermarket will have quick cook (1-2 minute simmer) and instant versions of Cream of Wheat, Oatmeal, Grits, hot chocolate, etc. I also found freeze dried fruit in the cereal section today. I actually prefer regular dried cranberries (Craisens by Ocean Spray), blueberries, cherries, apricots, peaches, raisins, etc.
Tuna & chicken in foil (getting hard to find a decent selection) and regular cans are backpacking staples. Instant mashed potatoes, instant rice, Knorr rice & pasta side dishes are all mentioned fondly at this forum. Wander the shelves. See what strikes your fancy. Read the preparation directions. "Simmer for 30 minutes" is OUT! "Add boiling water" is IN!
Can you eat smoked baby fish from a can? For days on end? Could you live on herring, clams, oysters, sardines, etc.? I can't.
Why do your posts always start with, "I was surprised by the weight of 10 bags of Trail Mix", etc.? Don't you look at product weights, whether they are food or gear? Do some mental arithmatic?
Some folks live off of junk food on the AT. Candy bars, Oreos, Chips Ahoy, Moon Pies, Honey Buns, Snickers, Almond Joy, etc., etc. that seems wordse than little baby fish in cans.

Find out what you can eat for 3-4-7 days in a row. Let us know what you find out.


Wayne

[Dogwood]

Read food packages! Maximize nutrition while aiming at a high cals/oz ratio. Nuts, seeds, cheese, coconut, dried meats, nut butters, etc

[Venchka]

Nutella! Peanut M&Ms.

Wayne

[MuddyWaters]

1. You dont get the food weight down, except by sticking to the highest cal/oz foods you can. You need the calories. No matter what, you wont be getting enough usually.

2. Shoot for 150 cal/oz. You should know food cal/oz by heart. Olive

Olive oil - 240 cal/oz used to boost meals
Peanut butter - 190 cal/oz
candy bars, cookies - 150 cal/oz
pepperoni 140 cal/oz
trail mix - 150-180 cal/oz
little debbie snacks - 125-150 cal/oz

thats why so much of the diet is this kind of stuff.

dried pasta/rice meals ~100 cal /oz
tuna - 80 cal/oz
jerky - 80 cal/oz

These items are necessary, but bring your average WAY down. Use olive oil to boost these dinners.

3. For two weeks, you are probably looking at about 14*1.75 = 25 lbs food if keeping calories in the 150 cal/oz range. Thats 4200 cal /day. The lower your calorie average, the less calories you get. You could be as low as 2000 cal if you choose poorly!.


Perfectly do-able for someone with a light basewt. Initial pack wt would push 35-40 lbs,but would drop 1.75 lbs per day.

Quite literally, thru hikers have lived off of squeeze parkay and peanut butter. (Model T)

[Dogwood]

+1 to the EVOO suggestion. It's the great body wt equalizer when I'm hiking FOR ME.

[Venchka]

ps: I have never knowingly bought a bag of trail mix in my life. A Ziploc bag and throw stuff in it. That is trail mix. Different everytime.

Wayne

[Dogwood]

I'll tell you something else that goes hand in hand with lowering your food wt Todd52 - lowering the volume of that food through more compact cal rich nutrient heavy food choices. That also entails repackaging which FOR ME on 5-6 day hikes means eliminating 2-3 oz of excess packaging.This also snowballs or contributes to requiring a lower volume pack which should mean your back pack will weigh less!

[illabelle]

Thanks, so what exactly would one carry for a week?. Can anyone post a list here?. Would be interesting to see.

We are planning two one week hikes this year, one in PA in April, the other in Vermont in Sept. My hope is to plan it so we can resupply mid-week. If that's not practical, I will definitely cut out all the special food, no fresh fruit, no frozen veggies. Our meals would be lightweight, lean, plain, boring, and repetitive (ramen w/ mashed potatoes, mashed potatoes with ramen, ramen with ramen). But we can afford to do this, because we're going home afterwards where we can eat whatever we want.
If we were long-distance hikers, we would not be able to neglect nutrition just because it's heavy.

[rocketsocks]

1. You dont get the food weight down, except by sticking to the highest cal/oz foods you can. You need the calories. No matter what, you wont be getting enough usually.

2. Shoot for 150 cal/oz. You should know food cal/oz by heart. Olive

Olive oil - 240 cal/oz used to boost meals
Peanut butter - 190 cal/oz
candy bars, cookies - 150 cal/oz
pepperoni 140 cal/oz
trail mix - 150-180 cal/oz
little debbie snacks - 125-150 cal/oz

thats why so much of the diet is this kind of stuff.

dried pasta/rice meals ~100 cal /oz
tuna - 80 cal/oz
jerky - 80 cal/oz

These items are necessary, but bring your average WAY down. Use olive oil to boost these dinners.

3. For two weeks, you are probably looking at about 14*1.75 = 25 lbs food if keeping calories in the 150 cal/oz range. Thats 4200 cal /day. The lower your calorie average, the less calories you get. You could be as low as 2000 cal if you choose poorly!.


Perfectly do-able for someone with a light basewt. Initial pack wt would push 35-40 lbs,but would drop 1.75 lbs per day.

Quite literally, thru hikers have lived off of squeeze parkay and peanut butter. (Model T)

^ This ^...............

[Dogwood]

Our meals would be lightweight, lean, plain, boring, and repetitive (ramen w/ mashed potatoes, mashed potatoes with ramen, ramen with ramen). Illabelle

If that's what you want but it DOES NOT have to be that way if you will be creative and ascertain a little more food knowledge by simply perusing the grocery store shelves at a large local grocery store for trail food ideas.

[illabelle]

Our meals would be lightweight, lean, plain, boring, and repetitive (ramen w/ mashed potatoes, mashed potatoes with ramen, ramen with ramen). Illabelle

If that's what you want but it DOES NOT have to be that way if you will be creative and ascertain a little more food knowledge by simply perusing the grocery store shelves at a large local grocery store for trail food ideas.

I was exaggerating about the ramen. On our weekend hikes, we have good food. But if we were trying to carry an entire week's food - or more - without resupply (the original question), I would sacrifice variety and fresh produce in favor of getting the weight manageable. Maybe if we were stronger hikers, it would be less of a concern. We're not strong, and that's why we hope to plan our week-long trips with resupply.

[Drybones]

Thanks, so what exactly would one carry for a week?. Can anyone post a list here?. Would be interesting to see.

You can control what you start with but when you re-supply it depends on what's available. I'll be starting 50 miles south of Damascus, that's normally 2-1/2 days but I'm carrying extra food so I can eat well starting out. Four days in my sack consist of:

(3) zip locks with 1-1/2 cups of granola & 1/3 cup dry milk, sometimes I add honey if I have it.

about 2 lbs of trail mix

(2) zip locks with a cup of minute rice and dehydrated can of salmon.

(2) bags of beef flavored Raimen noodles with 1/2 lb (before dehydrating) dehydrated hamburger

(2) 1 lb beef summer sausages

(3) sticks of cheese, each weighs 1/4 lb

(6) 1 oz sesame seed snaps...230 calories /oz

Chewing gum...not a tooth brush but it helps.

The sausage is like carring bricks, I'll eat those early on.

[Odd Man Out]

Here is a nice web page for looking up nutritional data on food.
http://nutritiondata.self.com/

Also, here is another way to think of it that maybe simplifies things. As pointed out earlier, your primary goal is to get calories but carry as little weight as possible. The vast majority of the mass (weight) in your food bag will be one of 5 things: fats (including oils), carbohydrates (starches and sugars), proteins, water, and packaging. Everything else are micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, salt, fiber). You need these too, but the total mass is so small compared to the macronutrients you don't need to worry about them when figuring calorie density. Pure fat/oil will have about 240 cal/oz. Pure protein and carbs will have about 110 cal/oz. Water and packaging obviously have zero calories. So to get as much food energy as you can in you pack, you want to have as little water and packaging as possible. Having more fat will bring the density up. If you want to get an idea of how much water is in the food, look at the nutritional label. Add up the grams of total fats, carbs, and protein and compare to the serving size (in grams). The difference is how much water there is in that food. Even "dry" foods like pasta will have some water.

For example, look at peanut butter. A 2 Tbs serving (32 g) has 16 g of fat, 6 g of carbs, and 8 g of protein. That adds up to 30 grams of nutrients so there is probably about 2 g of water. Since the water content is very low and the fat content is very high, it has a very good calorie density (166 cal/oz). I have often seen people post that don't like to carry PB because it is "too heavy". In fact, exactly the opposite is true. Dark chocolate is about the same (but with less protein and more carbs than PB).

Another hiker favorite is the Pop Tart. A 50 g serving (1 Pop Tart), has 3 g of fat, 39 g of carbs, and 2 g of protein (and 6 g of water). Another good choice (not much water weight), but as it is mostly carbs, it has a lower calorie density (105 cal/oz).

Another popular choice, cheese, actually has a lot of water (40% +/-), but because it about an equal mixture of fat and protein, it also averages about 100 cal/oz (I looked up American "cheese", cheddar, Parmesan, Gouda, provolone, they were all pretty similar).

Finally, there is the ubiquitous instant Ramen. A 42 g package has 7 g fat, 28 g carbs, 4 g protein, 4 g water and 127 cal/oz. Cook it up with some sesame oil (pure fat) and you'll do even better.

[todd52]

First of all, thanks for all the really good replies and food lists. I found them quite interesting and am learning a lot from all of this. I guess the reason I've mentioned (a few times) how I was surprised by how much various things weigh is because when I purchase half a dozen or so items and feel the weight of them individually (or a few at a time) it doesn't feel like like a lot of weight. However, the combined weight of all of these items when put ion a bag and handed to me (or stuffed in my pack) really adds up fast. That is why, now that I've gotten nearly all the gear I need, I have begun to systematically trying to get the weight down to a reasonable amount. I was surprised to read that people are carrying packs that weight 40-50 pounds. I'm a small (and out of shape) guy and 30 pounds feels like a bag of bricks to me (makes my legs feel heavy and wobbly). I hate that feeling because it makes me question my ability to do this but maybe I just need to get on some kind of excersize routine.

Thanks again for the great responses.

[Bronk]

Be ruthless in keeping your pack weight down and then ignore any lightweight rules when it comes to food...just carry whatever kind of food you want.

[Dogwood]

1 oz sesame seed snaps...230 calories /oz - DryBones

What are these? maybe, those little hard sesame chewy candies.

[yellowsirocco]

+1 to the EVOO suggestion. It's the great body wt equalizer when I'm hiking FOR ME.

Better to use regular olive oil. Extra virgin can have too strong a taste for some things, the regular is more versatile.