Recommended Food List in 1921

[JR Redding]

I have been working on a project with the Green Mountain Club in Vermont and came across this piece of information on their website. It is an excerpt from the 1921 guidebook to the Long Trail.

Note: The last piece of advice

Food List For Two Men For Two Weeks
Flour, 10 lbs. Baking Powder, 1-2 lbs.
Bacon, 5 lbs. Dried Apricots, 2 lbs.
Cinnamon, 1 oz. Dried milk, 2 lbs.
Cocoa, instant, 1 can Succotash, 2 cans
Corn meal, 4 lbs. Butter, 4 lbs.
Pepper, 1-2 oz. Rice, 2 lbs.
Bread, 1 loaf Oatmeal, 3 lbs.
Sugar, 9 lbs. Salt 1 1-2 lbs.
Raisins, 1 lbs. Tea, 1-2 lbs or more
Chocolate, 2 lbs. Salmon, 2 cans
Cheese, 1-2 lbs Candles, 6

The above list is the average of a number of trips, and is suited to the appetite of the author. Some will need more; but it is wiser to reach a food station or the end of the trip just about out of food, rather than to carry several unnecessary pounds over mountain trails – better even to go without a meal due to short commons.

…The wise man goes light.

[Unknown abc]

Wow, thats alot o' food.

cheers

[Nia Schmald]

Actually it looks like a pretty good list and reasonably light other than the cans, but they didn't have ziplocs then. My rough guess is about 3500 calories /person /day

Bacon fat biscuits on the trail sound great!

[Joe Kuster]

In this situation, wouldn't it be likely that they would have a pack animal carrying the load anyway?

It sounds like a lot of food at first, but considering the weight of the containers, cooking by fire and current cultural expectations on types of food, it sounds about reasonable for the time period.

I come from a family of trappers and native americans (extreme rural Missouri) and even up into the 70's that sounded a lot like a typical 2 week hunting trip when bringing mules to pack the load. In my family they'd have swapped out some of the flour for potato flour products for potato pancakes, added some fat back and jerky, but otherwise sounds pretty close.

[Roger Caffin]

It looks a lot, doesn't it? But is it?

I converted it all to weight, making a few assumptions (eg a can of succotash weighs 1 lb), and ended up with 26.4 kg.

Assuming they do mean two people and 14 full days, that's 943 gpppd. I average about 750 gpppd. I would say that for 1921, they were doing pretty well!

They would had to do a bit more cooking – the flour has to be converted for instance, but even so … But no jam and no coffee! Sob!

Cheers

[JR Redding]

It is actually interesting that is you stop and think about the style of cooking in that era, they have many of the good basics to fuel your body over a long hike but I am sure they spent a great deal of time on preparation.

-Gather firewood
-Build fire ring
-Get fire going
-Hand mix ingrediants
-Cook/Bake food
-Cleanup dishes etc

Talk about camp chores.

I just found it interesting that they discussed the idea of food drops and then end it with —The wise man goes light!

As for pack animals… they wouldn't have used pack animals on a trail that was brushed enough for humans. In fact in the same guide it was recommended everyone carry a light Axe and women carry hatchets. Of course I suspect that was largely for fire building.

[Bob dylan]

What a cool list to post. I really enjoyed reading what they used to do back then. Like others have said I think it fits well with the time period, though packing lighter, like we can nowadays is much better!

[Author]

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