As one would imagine, when you are hiking for 8-10 hours every day for months on end, food is an important consideration. I particularly love this tidbit from the Plan Your Hike website:
The Basal metabolic rate requirement of food calories is approximately 1,000 per day per 100 pounds of body weight. This means you need to eat about 1,000 calories per 100 pounds of body weight per day to survive without losing weight under normal conditions.
Does that seem low to you? I am an 180 pound male who exercises regularly and I definitely eat around 3,000 calories a day. So, I am estimating that I will need to consume at least 5,000 calories a day for the entire trip, minimum. To give you some perspective on what would be required to intake that many calories, here are a few foods and the quantities required to reach 5,000 calories (source):
- Olive Oil - 42 Tablesppons
- Peanut Butter - 53 Tablespoons
- Snickers - 18.5 regular bars
- Whole Almonds - 6 cups (1.9 lbs)
- Dried Quinoa - 8 cups (3 lbs)
- Muesli - 17 cups (3.2 lbs)
The foods listed there are considered relatively calorie dense for their weight too. The average PCT thru-hiker will be consuming about 2-2.5 pounds of food a day and even then most will lose 5-15 pounds of weight during their trip. I am a fairly lean guy already, so the process of keeping my body fueled and healthy is in the forefront of my thoughts now that all of my gear is purchased and ready.
While the calorie quantity and weight of the food is important, it also has to meet all the nutritional requirements that the strain of the trail puts on your body. An often cited resource for thru hikers is Dr. Braaten's Pack Light, Eat Right website. She covers everything from protein content to vitamins, as well as some recommended foods and recipes. Thankfully, as Amelia frequently says, I am a good eater. Put food in front of me and I will eat it. Even on mountains and in cold weather, my mind is so used to eating on a constant basis that even if I am not feeling hungry I am programmed to continue putting anything consumable within reach into my mouth.
That being said, I do appreciate having a hot, tasty meal that has absolutely nothing to do with energy bars, trail mix, soup mixes, or potato flakes. Since I am being resupplied five times via mail drop while in California, those boxes seemed like a perfect time to throw in a half dozen lightweight backpacking meals. Researching a half dozen dried and freeze dried meal companies online, I settled on Outdoor Herbivore. Their meals looked the most appetizing and were extremely price competitive compared to a company like Mountain House. They also have a fantastic 15% bulk discount on orders over $200, which sealed the deal. I went through their website last Monday and chose twelve different meals, which were delivered at the end of last week:
Bought two Hungry Double sized packages of the following meals:
- AppalaChia
- Bee Good Couscous
- Blackened Quinoa
- Cheddar' Mac
- Chia Oat Crunch
- Coconut Chia Peel
- Ginger Chia Gooey
- Naked Freckle Burrito
- Savory Lentil Simmer
- Sunny Sunflower Salad
- Switchback Soup & Stuffer
- Toasted Sunburst Muesli
If you want to see how the different meals compare on price/weight/calories, I created a spreadsheet that breaks it all down. Even with their excellent prices, if I bought only these meals for the entirety of my trip, the cost to feed me for the entire trip would be approximately $4,400. That is not including any money I spent on restaurant food during zero mileage days in town. Bit pricey. But for the occasional treat during mail resupply, I think they are going to be extremely welcomed.