Cheapest food calorie per dollar

[Diane “Piper” Soini]

Someone posted this list on Reddit of the cheapest food per calorie that they found at Sam's Club. I was amused how much of it can be found being eaten out on the PCT or the AT.

http://i.imgur.com/fEaNt2J.jpg

[rick .]

Thanks for sharng.

My spreadsheet has a column for cost. Its a bit silly since a day's worth of backpacking food costs less than a good nyc lunch. I still sort of keep an eye on it so things don't get out of hand.

[David Thomas]

An interesting perspective. I expected peanut butter to win and it did. And with all that fat and oil, it also makes for one of the more weight-efficient calories sources and one of the very most volume-dense calorie-dense foods.

Another way to track cheap food is to watch what grad students eat. Peanut butter, pasta, and Top Ramen are the classics.

[Bill Segraves]

Bulk raisins can be had at pretty close to $0.10/calorie. IMO, much better in most respects than most of the low-cost alternative carb sources. Peanuts for fat and protein plus raisins for carbs works pretty darn well from almost all perspectives. The people who "invented" GORP weren't dummies.

Peanut protein isn't the greatest quality protein, though. IMO, it'd be interesting to cost out the various viable protein sources with adjustment for protein quality (such as by the PDCAAS method). At some point, I'll probably try it myself, for kicks, if someone doesn't beat me to it, but I'm afraid that soy nuts will win. They're the only thing I've ever taken with me as backpacking food that I just don't want to eat when I'm backpacking. :(

Cheers,

Bill S.

[Diane “Piper” Soini]

I'm pretty certain that soy isn't fit for human consumption so yeah, bleah on the soynuts.

For a backpack trip I don't know that I ever want the cheapest food possible. Unless it's a long trail and I'm running out of money.

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