Food to bring on long hike

A lot will depend on your personal (or rather your body's) preferences, and without experience it is hard to know how your body will react to given diet during hiking. Dry-testing it beforehand is not very informative, unless you try to do a few days long hike with all the food and equipment that you plan to carry for 14 days.

Some principles to think about:

• The more kcal/per day you want, the more you will need to carry, and as a result you will need to burn more calories. I doubt that on such a long trek you can avoid energy deficiency. This is not a big deal, and you can still feel well-fed.
• The more fat there is in your diet, the more calorie dense it will be. Proteins and carbohydrates give you around 4000 kcal/kg, fat 9000 kcal/kg. The only way to get average above 4000 is to increase amount of fat*.
• You may find that ingesting a lot of fat makes you feel bad. They can have laxative properties, and they just doesn't seem appealing (maybe it's just me - try eating a spoonful of lard with no bread or anything). So you will find that there is a limit to average calorie density of your food.
• if you reduce the amount of food compared to your everyday diet, your are likely to get constipation. Luckily, larger amounts of fats somewhat help here, but add some fiber to your diet.
• Finally cooking - if you plan to cover that much ground each day, then you probably don't want to spend a lot of time cooking and cleaning. If you want some hot meals, try to aim for food that requires only a little bit of boiling. If you use gas stove, this should help you to save some weight by reducing fuel consumption.

My thoughts about your list:

• more than 1 kg per day is a lot. I find that I can't eat that much when hiking, even though I don't get enough calories. Add these 16 kg to your normal gear and walk for a few hours to check if you can carry that much. I have seen a ballpark figure of one pound per person per day, which works in my case (my setup is 0.5kg/day), though may not work for you.
• If by rice you mean normal rice, then I would find some replacement that is easier to cook and clean after. Depending on your preferences and location you may be able to find rice flakes, instant potatoes/potatoe flakes, buckweat flakes, maybe some sort of pasta, etc. Test them beforehand, you may not like the taste. Take fat that you can mix with these carbs.
• nuts are a good source of fat and protein and can be eaten on the trail, so good choice. Chew them well though, otherwise they will not be digested.
• I would increase the amount of fat by sacrificing soy granules and raisins (or proteins and simple sugars in general).
• I would carry a bit of fiber that I can add to my meals depending on how my body behaves.
• add some extra salt

*or ethanol, but this makes hiking challenging

posted over 6 years ago

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robaki‭

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