Caloric Density Spreadsheet

[Greg F]

Does anyone have a generic caloric density spreadsheet for a whole bunch of foods. I thought I found one at one point in time but never saved it.

I started to make my own but it is pretty time consuming

[drowning in spam]

Here's what I've been using.

Food spreadsheet

[James Marco]

There are a lot of subtle pitfalls to spreadsheets for food.
Yes, they might help with sorting caloric density, but you may find yourself craving certain foods and not prepared to eat that snickers bar in your pocket.
Here is a ling from Ryan Jordan's trek from a few years back.
http://backpackinglight.typepad.com/2006_arctic/2006/06/on_food_and_coo.html
A good background starts here, note that there are problems with this for UL people and you end up with about 2.25lb/day… Roughly what Ryan was using…

1) Add a vitamin/mineral supliment to your diet and forget dietary concerns, except for fresh vegtables… Difficult, but many vitamins do NOT store or dehydrate well, example: Vitamin C. In three season camping forage for berries, edible plants.

2) FATS and OILS should make up 40-50% of your caloric intake. Chocolate bars, olive oil, parafied butter, salami, pepperoni, dried hot dog bits, etc…Anything that has a high percentage of fat in them is a candidate for packing. Often, these same foods do not dehydrate well, soo, look to the deli counter.

3) Proteins…jerkey, dried beef, peanuts, beans, nuts, etc. If you get to many, they are broken down for calories. Dehydrated whole eggs are good mixed in, too.

4) Carbs…carbs are usually pretty easy. Brown rice, couscous, oatmeal, etc. Wraps are fairly good and can soak up a light spread of olive oil.

5) Cheese is oily and supplies a lot of calcium, and other nutrients. Most types of hard cheeses are good, ie string cheese and harder. Get the whole milk variety.

6) Powdered milk, bisquck, mashed potatoes, cocoa, etc. These add to other foods and really can extend variety in meals and breakfasts.

7) A nut bar or other energy bar can be a treat. Figure one per day.

Generally, choose items you like to eat. The first week or so you will loose some weight, so, plan on it. I can usually figure about 1.5lb per day and be happy. For
a weekend, I can get by with about 1.1lb per day. For longer, it goes up to about 2lb per day. About 2.5lb per day thereafter up to about a month. You are shooting for about 140 calories/oz.

Skurka has this to say:
http://www.andrewskurka.com/advice/nutrition.php

[Greg F]

I probably won't run into the long term issues.

My general goal is to create tasty meals for 2 to 7 day trips while keeping weight low. So I am most interested base food calories and then I can assemble the base ingredients into meals.

This way I can substitute poor calorie desnse foods for high calorie dense foods. It gets time consuming looking up calories in a pita vs calories in a tortilla vs …

Thanks for the tips and that article was a good read.

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