Light Food

Marshmellows

I've been using food like…

Ramein noodles
Cup-a-soup
Red beans and rice
Protein power bars
Mashed potatoes

I try to use stuff that requires simply boiled water.

Check out maryjanesoutpost dot org

It is a nice change of pace from Mountain House and the others.

Matti

I think a better way to look at it is what food gives you the most bang for the buck. I am into nutrition and try to look at what gives me the most calories-to-weight, and in the least amount of space. Top Ramen is very light at 1.48 oz per package but it only gives 128 calories per oz and takes up a lot of space. Sunflower seeds give 165 calories per oz and take a fraction of the space.

I like freeze-dried at night, and usually have some form of natural raw bars and or seeds/nuts for breakfast and lunch. I am usually around 22 oz a day for food and drink powder per day on long hikes. Take a look at the thread on Bear Vaults for an 8 day supply of mine.

Whatever you eat, often you can boost its caloric value, and taste appeal, simply by adding olive oil. (I use high quality olive oil, which has the best taste, and add it to dehydrated food just before eating.) It's among the highest sources of calories per ounce, or per cubic inch, and, when you're body's working hard, tastes great.

I haven't done the math, but I suspect that it also costs less per calorie than most freeze-dried food.

i eat enertia trail foods. they are my favorite. they taste really good, pack small, and are very light. they are dehydrated as opposed to freeze dried so they keep a lot of nutrional value. most of them pack a pretty good calorie punch too. a great number of the recipes take less than 2 cups of water. did i mention that they taste really good.

http://www.trailfoods.com

I'm a fan of sunflower seeds & nuts in general. Not heavy, and they have a lot of calories. Simple rice is also a good fuel for the body. One of my favorite hiking staples is sailor boy "pilot bread", which is basically a giant cracker that is popular with the fishermen in the town I grew up in. Not a lot of calories for its weight per se, but that's easiy fixed with peanut butter or nutella.

I let my sweet tooth go wild while hiking, so I like to bring pop tarts & chocolate for snacks. I balance it out by also packing jerky or home-dyhydrated salmon.

Some foods I learned to steer clear of are dehydrated fruits and too many energy bars. They seem like good choices at first, but they feel like bricks when you pack a week's worth.

I heard somewhere that you can add calories to anything by sprinkling on coconut shavings.

I find it helpful to develop a calories/ounce ratio for each item when I am food planning, especially on longer trips. Most serving sizes on the side of the container are in ounces, so this is usually pretty easy. Get out your scale to measure portions, and you are good to go and know exactly how many calories you are carrying.

Andrew Skurka aims for 125 calories per ounce, but this rules out some of the stuff I like on the trail! Nonetheless, it is a useful baseline.

Oh, and I second the use of olive oil.

James

I've had mixed luck with Enertia. If you get an older batch, the powders can get hard like a rock. Sometimes I get a chemical taste too. The portions are only large enough if you add some extras, which they are designed for since there is a lot of sauce. I still carry them every now and then for simplicity.

I love the Mary Janes stuff though. It's expensive but the portions are large and the flavors are wonderful. Bring a bit of salt though.

Olive oil is always worth its weight, same for nut butters if you like them.
Many of my meals always have two things added: olive oil and tons of Parmesan cheese. Yum.

You can do lighter weight food very easily! Just come over to the nutrition section here!

I just bought some Nido. It's powdered full-fat milk. It's delicious. Good enough to use when I'm not backpacking.

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/quick_healthy_meals_with_an_ultralight_cook_kit.html

this article (LINK above) is a good format for eating on a lightweight stove.

NO ramen
NO freeze dried food
NO meat!

Easy and satisfying…

M!

"I think a better way to look at it is what food gives you the most bang for the buck. I am into nutrition and try to look at what gives me the most calories-to-weight, and in the least amount of space."

I agree with Ray, with two additional provisions: It is important to make sure you get a enough carbs to fuel the metabolic fire that fat "burns" in, and enough protein for metabolic needs and tissue repair, especially on longer trips. There have been several threads on this topic the would be worthwhile reads for the OP. Getting a lot of calories is pretty straightforward(olive oil, nuts, chocolate, etc), but getting enough carbs and protein in the mix takes a lot of planning and experimentation to tailor the mix to your personal metabolic requirements. Then you have to try and get it down to a reasonable weight and volume. Mike C. says 1#5 oz is about right, I do fine on 1#4 oz(I'm a little guy), many others need 1.5#. It's an interesting puzzle to solve and, I think, one of the most overlooked aspects of backpacking. I'm glad it has surfaced again.

I also add olive oil to my enertia meals at supper.

I add extra virgin coconut oil to my breakfast if I'm eating hot, like oatmeal or grits or whatever.

Mike,
Will you be posting the measures needed to make up the sauces shown in the "Groovy Macro….."?

I understand, and even have the ingredients, but don't have clue about the proportions.

Thanks.

“I agree with Ray, with two additional provisions: It is important to make sure you get a enough carbs to fuel the metabolic fire that fat "burns" in, and enough protein for metabolic needs and tissue repair, especially on longer trips.”

You are absolutely correct. I was focusing on the “light” aspect of the thread and did not want to get too heavy on the nutrition. (I am still a newbie here, you know?) But balance is extremely important, especially on long trips as you try to trim weights and serving sizes down. And where you put that balance of fats/protein/carbs into your day plays a huge factor too as you fine tune it.

Of course my favorite way of cutting my calories on a hike is to spend as much time at high altitude as I can. Then I just don’t want to eat a lot…

3rds or 4ths whatever its up to now on the Enertia Foods. Good variety of flavors, and one of the few trail foods I am not forcing myself to finish even when I am not hungry. The trash from the meal goes in the bag it came in. Just get yourself a long handled spork and enjoy.

unlike a lot of the “eat cold ultra lighters” we met in the mountains last summer, we boil water in the morning and at night, or wherever we do cook the main meal of the day (sometimes away from camp to fool the bears). Good food keeps the motivation high. I have two kids to keep happy on the trail…

Mornings hot chocolate, hot oatmeal, or oatmeal bars (cheap at the super market)

Second breakfast: home made cereal (oats, granola, lots of dried fruit, extra sugar, almond flakes, etc) with dry whole milk powder, sometimes also with “instant breakfast” drink mixed in. That’s usually our real breakfast. Instant breakfast with milk powder also as drink without the cereal.

Lunch – crisp bread with various toppings, from tuna in the pouch to Chorizo Saussage.

PM snack – Cliff bars, Pemmican bars, etc

Supper – mostly Ramen Noodles (but repacked with flat extra pasta, not the curly stuff that sucks up space in your bear caniste), added dehydrated chicken (bulk caninster from saratogatrading.com), some extra seasoning, olive oil. Als like the Knorr instant beans, dirty rice mix, etc – all these meals cook in 5-7 mins and save fuel. We did have a few commercial dehydrated meals – of those we only liked the Mountain House Beef Stroganoff and their Chili. Fancy Thai and organic dehydrated dishes we tried at places where other hikers left these things behind were not so grand. Another thing we really liked last year were some flour tortillas with heated shredded-beef out of a pouch. Have to find a dehydrated version of that shredded beef, though.

Nutella is an AWSOME alternative to peanut butter – my kids love it, while they hate peanut butter. Eat with crackers, or straight out of the jar as snack. High fat, high carb.

Other snacks: Haribo Gummi Bears, Sharkies, Blue Diamond flavored Almonds, more Cliff Bars (we didn’t buy any, but each hiker food depot pickup had dozens in the left-behind bin…)

Drink – lots of Gatorade, about 2 quarts per day for the three of us, some non-sugar lemoade powder to reduce the amount of boring plain water, coffee in the am (Folgers Singles), Hot chocolate, Cappucino drink mix, some non-sugar Kool aid we used with very small amounts of sugar just to flavor water.

Add to that Thermotabs for potassium chloride, multi-vitamins, a few gummi-vitamins, and the usual chocolate bar treat to be consumed at the food depot pickup because it melts in the pack.

This year I’ll pack some Scho-Ka-Cola if I can find a reasonable price for that stuff around here.

Mary Janes Farm – Instants
Tuna or Salmon packets
GU's
Macadamia nuts
Sunflower seeds
Cashews
Peanut M&M's
Dehydrated Mangoes & Pineapples
Pretzels
Wheat Thins
Hot Coco
Small Apple
Starbucks-Double Shot
Skittels
Butterfingers
Single-Malt Scotch–just enough
Bagels w/ PB packets & Honey packets

"And where you put that balance of fats/protein/carbs into your day plays a huge factor too as you fine tune it."

If I read you right, Ray, that would mean the majority of the fat and protein at either end of the day and carbs while on the move? With the heaviest ration of fat and protein in the evening when the heat from digestive processes can help keep you warm in the bag?

Hi Tom

More or less.
I normally put almost all the fat and protein in the evening.
Home-made heavy muesli for breakfast!

Cheers

Actually kind of the opposite for me.

I try to put my fats up front in the morning. Breakfast is usually one Lara bar and some sunflower seeds, or two Larabars. They are high in fat. But fat will burn slowly all day as I am hiking. More bars or Corn-nuts a couple times during the day (I rarely stop for lunch when solo or with Dave) or some Shot Bloks give carbs. Dinner time is when I have a freeze-dried to give protein and carbs.

I do very poorly with very much fat and protein during the day. This is especially true above 10,000 feet elevation, but even at sea level it saps my energy.

It took halfway through a three week bicycle tour in Ireland to realize that the Irish Breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, more sausage, bread, and porridge was killing me. After I stopped eating the meat suddenly I had energy.

Unfortunately after taking several years off from hiking and bike touring I had forgotten this concept. Last summer in an attempt to get lots of calories I had once again packed lots of nuts as part of my lunches.

I developed a routine of eating carbs on the uphills and only digging into the trail mix at the top of the pass. That worked pretty well with the Sierra passes where the downhill hike took me a few hours.

I find getting enough protein is important, although the emphasis has to be on carbs as everybody in this thread has mentioned. Turkey jerky at Costco is good for protein while keeping fat level low. I always shred it and repackage to conserve bear can space.