Heyo, Chris here. I get a lot of questions about backpacking
food. What kind of food to bring backpacking? How much food to bring backpacking? So I've got a 5 day, 4 night backpacking trip
coming up and I have all of my food laid out here and a lot of this stuff is what I used
on the Appalachian Trail and I've got a few things that I've been using differently so
I wanted to make a quick video and share it with you guys. So the basics of backpacking food are really
pretty simple and you can kind of break it down into really three requirements for, excuse
me, your food. The first being you want to keep it lightweight
so a lot of backpacking food needs to be dehydrated or freeze dried. You really wanna get rid of that water weight. So, you know, nothing canned. With keeping the wight in mind, I generally
try to think about roughly two pounds of food per day as kind of a rule of thumb to make
sure I'm getting enough food. The second requirement with your backpacking
food would be easy to prep. I don't bust out my stove until dinner time
so everything prior to dinner is going to be fast and minimal clean up so I generally
try to keep everything really to eat until the end of the day when I'm ready to unwind
and take out the stove and cook and, you know, deal with dishes and all that kind of clean
up stuff. Now, the third thing for backpacking food
is keep it high in nutrition. The estimates range for caloric burn. But, thru-hikers hiking twenty to twenty five
miles a day have been known to burn up to six thousand calories a day so for any kind
of moderate hiking just for a few days on the trail, I generally try to get at least
three thousand calories a day and try to also get, you know, a good balance of protein,
fiber, fats, carbs, sodium, all that good stuff because you need it too in addition
to calories. So we're going to start off with what I'm
actually bringing and we're going to start off with the breakfast, go into snacks, and
lunch and finally dinner. So we have here breakfast is, we have, oatmeal
cookie mix. I added some extra oats into it and I also
added powdered milk in here so this is a really kind of nutrient dense thing to get you going
in the morning and pack in some calories. And you can eat it cold. Just add some water to it, stir it up in your
pot and get to hiking. I also can have cold coffee. I know it sounds crazy, but you can have some
cold coffee. I actually really like the Starbucks. But the store didn't have Starbucks ones so
I got some Nescafe. And so thats kind of my breakfast. Then these are a bunch of snacks that I will
probably just graze on either after breakfast or after lunch. Starting off I've got seaweed. I love seaweed. It's a great vegetable to get on the trail. You know, it's really hard to get veggies
on the trail so seaweed is a really nice lightweight dense green. And then we got trail mix. Got dried fruit and kind of a variety nuts
in there and some M and M's. And then we have some Gatorade powder and
I've basically got a scoop or so per day to kind of get those electrolytes replaced, but
also break up the monotony of water. You know, drinking water all the time... the
idea of getting something a little bit sweet in there is really appealing usually I find
when I'm hiking. Then we have some crackers and peanut butter. I love pork rinds. They've got protein in them and a lot of sodium. I think they taste great and they're kind
of, really crunchy and crisp which is, I find, really nice and refreshing on the trail because
so much backpacking food is so dense. Next is Greenbelly. I actually started making Greenbelly right
after hiking the Appalachian Trail as a way to kind of get some dense, high calorie nutrition
and in a ready-to-eat, all natural format. So I've got Greenbelly Meals here. They've got a zip pouch seal. Inside is two all natural meal bars and they
are loaded with one third of your daily nutrition for protein, calories, fiber, fats, carbs
and sodium. So I'll do that for lunch as a quick kind
of non-cook meal. And going into dinner. This is kind of as I mentioned the only time
of the day I'll actually pull out the stove and cook. You know, it's like at the end of the day,
oh okay, I can unwind now. So I've got noodles, red beans and rice and
beef jerky. So like, with cooking, if it requires a plate,
bowl, anything like that, you know, I don't deal with it. It's really got to be what's called "one pot
cooking". Really simple stuff. So I'll do kind of some noodles and I like
to sprinkle in some beef jerky so I've got two packs here I'll do maybe half a pack per
night along with the rice or the noodles or whatever so that'll be my dinner. Then going on to something kind after, dessert. I generally sometimes bring some sort of candy,
candy bar, something sweet. Just something to look forward to. Also got some chamomile or decaffeinated tea
before bed. Something like that to just kind of wind down
at the end of the day. And I've been getting in the habit of bringing
a little bit of whiskey. Mixing that with water. I really love that and it doesn't add much
weight and it can be something to really look forward to. So, yea. That's the backpacking food. Feel free to leave a comment and ask any questions
and safe hiking.
