variety in meals

[One Half]

I'm going to be making all my backpacking meals for a thru on the AT next summer (2024). (see link below for some of my early results)
I'm curious as to how many DIFFERENT meals people think is enough variety. I will be making 3 meals per day - I don't eat nearly all the stuff backpackers "typically" eat. I eat 3 scrambled eggs every day with a mix of veggies and breakfast sausage, sometimes cheese. So that meal is taken care of. I intentionally need to slow down and take time for a meal at midday as otherwise I won't eat enough and also I build my miles too fast and get injured doing too much downhill too soon.

So - just how many meals in rotation would you want given that I will be eating lunch and dinner from my own "stock?"

[LoneStranger]

I get by on 3 flavors of breakfast and 5 or 6 flavors of dinner. Lunch is the same every day. That is enough variety that I enjoy every meal, but it really is sort of personal. I used to just carry one type of breakfast and 3 or 4 dinner options and I think a few more works better for me.

[RockDoc]

Good for you, the standard carb/sugar food is unhealthy!

For your egg meals, you can go dehydrated and have a lot of options of meals to just heat up in boiling water. Dehydrated eggs, mixed with dehydrated veges, and a variety of dried meats and cheese (dehydrated cheddar is good). We have a dehydrater and we make dried hamburger, ham, bacon, and STEAK! Yes you can dry steak and hamburger, just make it quite lean, and mildly cooked first.

We do something similar for dinner; dehydrated meat and dehydrated veges and spices and cheese.

For lunch we wing it with portable real food; jerky, hard boiled eggs, hard cheese, nuts, dried fruit, 90% Lindt chocolate, nut butter...

NO CARBY GARBAGE

By going low carb you will avoid huge damaging insulin swings and ravenous hiker hunger. Basically, you won't be hungry, and it won't lead to downstream health problems (T2D, etc)..

[One Half]

I have tested a number of meals in the past and several which I think will be very good options to my menu. I have 14 lunch/dinners at this point. I will probably add a few over the next few weeks/months as I experiment.

Now to figure out if I need to make different sized meals for the beginning vs end or even "lunch sized" and "dinner sized."

[HankIV]

EYOF (Eat your own food) and what not, food is so personal.

For nutritional edification related to hiking, would highly recommend the Gear Skeptic vids on utoob

[HankIV]

And check out the caloric density of ghee, great add to almost everything.

[Daybreak]

Posters should say how long their hike was. The same food for a month is different than for 4- 6 months.

These are my experiences, opinions and observations for 5 - 6 month thru hikers.

A thru hike has caloric and time demands that exceed those of most section hikers or LASHers. Ravenous hiker hunger is the body demanding more calories. I find that potential thru hikers sadly carry food amounts similar or less than eaten at home rather than doubling their needs. I use 2 to 2.5 lbs per hiking day plus freshies from town. Fat loss on hikes of 6 weeks or less is no big deal for most people. But by 2- 4 months, some thru hikers lack of food intake affects their hikes. There is no such thing as a hiker completing a thru hike who is over weight but there are many who may have dropped out due random issues that really go back to calories. (I can think of perhaps one but he never climbed Katahdin) If I were to pick a diet, I would choose that of elite marathon runners.

So no matter what food you bring, you need to perhaps double your intake compared to home. I find that successful thru hikers eat comfort food, however they define it. Toss whatever diet you are on out the window and bring those foods that you most love, healthy or not. What is not healthy on a thru hike is a lack of consumable calories. Yes you need some protein and nutrients... Volume and town usually makes up for any diet. It is not so much a rotation as bringing food that you love and can stuff yourself with. If you are on a picky or health mandated diet make sure you up your Na, K etc. levels. Btw junk food is great for this.

fyi, I generally buy as I go but you do as you need. There are foods I can eat every section and eat a lot of. Those things are my comfort foods and they need to taste like they do at home or it gets old. But I always look for that new thing each week. Rather than rotating, I would randomize. Rotations get old too. At times I've eaten the exact same thing every day for a resupply or two just to change things up. (Since I buy as I go, I know it is something I like at the moment).

Dinner is usually not a problem. 4-6 base dinners with lots of one offs. I keep it interesting by changing add in's. Both the amount and type. I now would bring lots of butter or clarified butter depending on the temp. and vary the amounts in dishes. Olive oil may be better for you but butter is a comfort food and I can add more. I use whole fat milk and mashed potatoes in varying amounts for flavor and thickeners for most dinners. As add-ins different nuts, soup mixes, spices, veggies, proteins each week can change texture and flavor. If i were to pre-make my meals and could store them cold I would add ground nuts and seeds as they digest better and are high in nutrients.

Most people stop cooking breakfast after few weeks. It is a pain on wet mornings. I mostly eat oatmeal with dried milk (really muesli since I don't cook it) but vary it with different nuts, seeds and dried fruit and occasionally different grains or textures(Cheerios, granola), cinnamon... and sometimes fresh fruit. I don't premix this. What you eat will be different but you can randomly add different add-ins. Make sure whatever is prepared on the trail tastes as good as home.

No matter what I eat for lunch (same thing each day of a resupply) I get tired of it so I vary it each resupply. It repeats when I run of ideas (4-5 primary ideas). I eat a lot of trail mix, snacks, 'desert' etc. in between meals to maintain a steady food intake and get my total calories up. Some snacks I eat every resupply if available others change. The same nuts, seeds and dried fruit can added to breakfast, lunch. snacks, and/or dinner/desert for variety.

[Starchild]

What you can carry is also temperature dependent and you can extend this by making a cooler inside your pack with a down puffy or like around a food bag. One thing I did on my thru is visit a food store and hide something I wanted to bring in the freezer case, come back later when it was frozen solid (typically the next morning), and buy it then. This allowed me to carry what would have normally spoiled in a nice cold state which allowed me to eat it the next day for dinner which added to the possible foods I could enjoy in trail.

[HankIV]

Daybreak makes a good point. Meals on my section hikes were more of an event, on my thru hike they were refueling.

I tried to make my food load be around 180 cals/oz. That’s about half fat, rest a mix of carbs and protein. I did try to have a Clif Builder bar as dessert, for protein after dinner.

I would buy just instant mashed for dinners if there was no outfitter in town. Would mix in some Fritos for texture. There were enough outfitters to keep that from getting old. Enough variety for me.

[HankIV]

Lots of nuts and seeds.

[Daybreak]

I have tested a number of meals in the past and several which I think will be very good options to my menu. I have 14 lunch/dinners at this point. I will probably add a few over the next few weeks/months as I experiment.

Now to figure out if I need to make different sized meals for the beginning vs end or even "lunch sized" and "dinner sized."

I use 1.5lbs versus 2 at the start but then throw in extra munchies e.g. snickers bar, cheese.. Whatever you normally eat on 5 day outing.

You can adjust at NOC.

[RockDoc]

Ravenous hiker hunger is the body demanding more calories.

No, that's not true. You'll never eat enough calories to equal what you are burning on a hard day of hiking. Hiker hunger is the body's response to insulin swings, caused by the kind of food you recommend, Cheerios, granola, etc. It doesn't happen if you don't eat those foods, and take the trouble and time to get fat adapted. But you wouldn't know if you have never fat adapted.

It's wonderful to be free of horrible hiker hunger, which leads to disgusting gluttony on the AT. Mind your insulin swings and this will not happen to you. Freedom! (and tons of energy from the almost limitless energy from burning fat on your body). No you don't need more calories, that's so wrong.

[HankIV]

No, that's not true. You'll never eat enough calories to equal what you are burning on a hard day of hiking. Hiker hunger is the body's response to insulin swings, caused by the kind of food you recommend, Cheerios, granola, etc. It doesn't happen if you don't eat those foods, and take the trouble and time to get fat adapted. But you wouldn't know if you have never fat adapted.

It's wonderful to be free of horrible hiker hunger, which leads to disgusting gluttony on the AT. Mind your insulin swings and this will not happen to you. Freedom! (and tons of energy from the almost limitless energy from burning fat on your body). No you don't need more calories, that's so wrong.

I don’t know, I was pretty fat dense on my thru and still got pretty hungry. I had some bars, but my general food bag was 170-80 cals/oz. I did start out fairly lean, 5’11 and 180. Dropped about 20lbs first month. Was not a keto purist by any means, but not typical thru hiker junk either. But was ravenous.

[One Half]

I don’t know, I was pretty fat dense on my thru and still got pretty hungry. I had some bars, but my general food bag was 170-80 cals/oz. I did start out fairly lean, 5’11 and 180. Dropped about 20lbs first month. Was not a keto purist by any means, but not typical thru hiker junk either. But was ravenous.

I have found a severe lack of anyone who truly followed keto or other low carb way of eating while thru hiking. I am low carb and I will stay that way. Maybe I shouldn't force feed myself and just wait for any hunger to kick in. But I'm not going to revert to eating bread and pizza, snickers bars and such. That stuff just makes me ill.

[One Half]

No, that's not true. You'll never eat enough calories to equal what you are burning on a hard day of hiking. Hiker hunger is the body's response to insulin swings, caused by the kind of food you recommend, Cheerios, granola, etc. It doesn't happen if you don't eat those foods, and take the trouble and time to get fat adapted. But you wouldn't know if you have never fat adapted.

It's wonderful to be free of horrible hiker hunger, which leads to disgusting gluttony on the AT. Mind your insulin swings and this will not happen to you. Freedom! (and tons of energy from the almost limitless energy from burning fat on your body). No you don't need more calories, that's so wrong.

Well said!

[HankIV]

Okay, I did just eat a whole sleeve of Girl Scout thin mints. Bad, bad, bad.

[TwoSpirits]

HankIV, you are my new hero LOLOL

[One Half]

Okay, I did just eat a whole sleeve of Girl Scout thin mints. Bad, bad, bad.

Rookie. When I ate that stuff I could hoover down 2 sleeves, maybe 2.5!

[Miner]

For some, the strong hunger symptoms experienced, is more due to a lack of proper nutrition, than just lacking calories. Too many hikers eat junk, both on trail and in town, with no thought of the nutrients your body needs to fully use the calories they do get, so some of it goes to waste. Whatever your meal plan is, make sure you are getting some proper nutrition, especially in town.

When I hiked the PCT over 4.5 months, I lost only 10 pounds (though with some lower body muscle gain, I probably lost a bit more in fat). I would have liked to have lost twice that to match my college weight. I was not fat when I started, though I was probably 25 pounds over my ideal weight. When I finished, I did still have some body fat.

Breakfast was mainly brown sugar cinnamon pop tarts, but my second breakfast was a 400 calorie BearValley meal bar that provided a lot of nutrition (unfortunately no longer made). Lunch was often peanut butter on tortilla with jam or honey, occasionally tuna with mayo packets. Dinner was mostly the usual Mash potato / Korr sides of various flavors, but with added freeze-dried vegetables, olive oil, and spam singles or tuna packets added. I snacked on Natural Valley granola bars and a snicker bar. I did take natural vitamin supplements with my meals, and not a single multi-vitamin which are almost worthless. Though rather than a packet of pills, I found I much preferred drinking a green superfood powder mixed in water. The further north I went, I increased the number of snacks, used more olive oil, bought larger size peanut butter. In fact, I started putting peanut button on everything, even every bite of my snicker bars which grew to 2 giant size ones a day. During the last month, I suspect I actually was putting back on weight.

If I came across an isolated gas station or convenience store that only sold just snacks and junk food, I would buy a V8 vegetable drink to down before carrying out a soda.

In a real town, I always tried to order healthy food, such as dark green salads, fruit, and vegetables over things like fries. Usually my first meal in town, I had a big appetite, but after that, I ate more normally. I never felt the urge to sit and eat multiple meals at a single sitting that I heard other hikers did. If you do feel like that, you body is definitely lacking something. If you aren't skin and bones, I would suspect you are craving something strongly that you aren't getting with eating pizza and burgers. You should try some fruit and veggies, before ordering more junk food to see if that solves the problem. I have run into numerous hikers over the years, that lacked energy after being on the trail for 2 months. I've never felt that. I really think it was a lack of decent nutrition causing their problems and not just a lack of calories.

I still do pretty much the same thing on hikes today, except that I eat more cheese with summer sausage, Italian salami, or pepperoni slices/sticks as some of my meals.

[maremieisen]

I think that making sure you get enough fat in your diet is pretty crucial to good health, especially on the trail, because our society is so improperly fearful of fats, and because fats can be a bit messy to manage on the trail. My solution is ghee (clarified butter), which in recent years has become much more available in stores, and if you can source it, non-hydrogenated lard. Yes, lard. Pork fat is delicious and incredibly versatile. Fatworks and Epic sell non-hydrogenated lard, though it's a bit pricey. Nalgene jars are leak-proof. Also, individual packets of nut butters, and whole milk powder.

I don't think you necessarily need to avoid "carbs", per se, but you do want to be conscious of not eating too many refined carbs that have no fiber or other nutrients other than carbohydate and protein, like white flour.

TVP and dehydrated or freeze-dried vegetables can go a long way toward bulking up meals and adding nutrition. They are quick to cook and easy to carry.