Considerations for Selecting Trail Food
You can apply some basic principles to food selection for backpacking. Some of them you should already be familiar with:
Weight
Remember that you will have to carry this. One source suggests a general guideline to be 3/4 kg of food per person per day. This is only if you pack wisely. That canned Puritan Stew (with mechanically de-boned, pre-formed meat chunks, which may contain beef and/or pork and/or chicken and/or turkey and/or mutton and/or lizard lips) may put you over the top just by itself, and that doesn't even cover breakfast or lunch. Some guidelines:
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Avoid cans. In fact, avoid any type of unnecessary container, including boxes and cartons.
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Consider water content. Carrying water within your food is an unnecessary burden. You can add water from your water source in camp. Think dry foods: rice, pasta, grains (oatmeal, cornmeal), and legumes, ... Avoid too many fresh vegetables (carrots, potatoes, onions) and fruits. They are high in water content. Consider drying fruit for the trail. (More on this later).
Bulk
As you work at reducing weight, you will probably also go a long way to reducing bulk. However, there are a number of foods which, while not heavy, are unnecessarily bulky. That bag of puffed wheat, for example, may just have to be replaced by a 125 ml of oatmeal. Forget the marshmallows, too. They will just be compressed lumps of sugar when you get to camp. And that loaf of white bread? An instant dough ball in your pack.
Cost
Sure that freeze-dried astronaut food from the specialty camping store tastes OK and weighs next to nothing, but so will your pocket book after one or two backpacking trips.
Garbage
If you do everything to reduce bulk and weight, you will probably have gone a long way to preventing excessive garbage. Nevertheless, here are some further suggestions:
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Remember that all garbage must be packed out with you! Thinking about packing that smelly sardine can with you for several days may help you to make the decision to leave it at home.
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Remove all unnecessary packaging before you leave home. Take that instant rice out of the box and dump the flavour packet and the rice in a ziploc. If you are afraid of forgetting the instructions, cut them out of the box and put them in the ziploc too. The ziploc gets re-used.
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Pack everything in ziplocs, double-bagged. This not only reduces containers, but it also minimizes bulk, since empty ziplocs take up a lot less room than a wild assortment of mom’s tupperware collection. Double bagging ensures that your ice tea mix won’t explode and pollute everything in your pack with a fine, sticky dust.
Ease of Preparation and Fuel Consumption
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Time and Fuel: Those navy beans may be compact and nutritious, but when you have to soak them overnight and then cook them for a couple of hours, you may want to rethink your selection (or cook them and dehydrate them ahead of time).
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Muss and Fuss: That five-course meal might have to wait until you get home, if it means that you need to operate three stoves simultaneously and you need five pots and a flambé pan to get it all right. Look to meals that take one or two pots to prepare.
Nutrition
Adios Los Doritos. On the trail you need something that will sustain you, not dehydrate you. You also need a range of foods which will provide you with the various types of nutrition your body needs:
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Quick Energy: Yes, we’re talking sugar content here, although don’t overdo it, and leave the snickers bars at home. Brown sugar on cereal, dried fruit, trail mix (with raisins and the odd M & M) are acceptable as are some drink crystals (but be careful; they inhibit the water’s ability to re-hydrate you).
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Long-term Energy: Complex carbohydrates is what we’re looking for here: whole grains (cornmeal, oatmeal, granola, rice, pasta ...), seeds (unsalted sunflower, pumpkin, ...), legumes (dried peas, lentils, beans, soybeans, ...) and nuts (do we have to list these too?) Most of these will also provide you with some protein, but we get ahead or ourselves.
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Protein: You will be using your muscles, so you will want to replenish them.
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Meat: Raw meat is a no-no. It just won’t keep. Cooked meat (such as sausage) will be good for a day or two, perhaps more if kept cool and in the shade. Meat included in a dehydrated dish will keep longer, especially if it is low-fat. Dry sausage (Eg. Schneiders Dry Salami) will keep several days.
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Eggs: A tad delicate, but they can be managed in special containers designed to transport them. Hardly worth the effort unless you use them within the first day or so and re-employ the container for another purpose. One alternative is to break the eggs ahead of time into a small plastic container and seal and refrigerate it immediately. Definitely use these eggs within the first two or three days of the trip. There is some health risk in this method. We disavow all knowledge of having told you about it, and we don’t highly recommend it.
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Cheese: Will keep for a number of days, especially if you can keep your pack out of the sun. A cheese like cheddar or mozarella tends to get a tad slimy as it sweats” out its fat content, but it is still quite edible and tasty. Parmesan cheese will keep indefinitely
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All Items Listed in the Previous Section: All the items listed in the complex carbohydrate section also provide protein, especially when used in combination with each other or with meat or cheese. Any of these combinations will provide a complete protein, although the quality of protein may vary somewhat:
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Grains and Cheese: macaroni and cheese, pizza, cream cheese on a bagel, crackers and cheese
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Legumes and Meat: lentil stew, chili, brown beans with pork
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Legumes and Whole Grains: beans and bagels, lentils and rice
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Whole Grains and Seeds or Nuts: granola (with oatmeal, sunflowers and almonds, for example), oatmeal with GORP sprinkled on top
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Vitamins: This can be one of the most difficult to cover, because fresh fruits and vegetables, our normal source for these, are so bulky and heavy. However, if you eat whole grains you will have much of your vitamin requirements filled (particularly under the AB). For the rest of your vitamin requirements you can include dried fruits or even dried vegetables.
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Minerals: Many nuts are high in calcium. Most other mineral needs should be looked after if you eat well according to the other nutritional requirements.
Flavour
We are not out to make ascetic monks out of you. There is nothing wrong with taking something along that tastes good.
Mess
Yes, you can make Rice Krispies squares on a camp stove, but do you want to?
Spoilage
The most delicious food in the world will be little good to you if bacteria, mould, and wilt get to it before you do. So the Caesar Salad, alas, will not happen. Raw meat is out (with the exception of first-night suppers). So are many other things which you would normally have to store in your fridge or freezer. Milk is prime example. Bring along the powdered milk; it has several uses. Margarine may become rather runny in the heat, but it will generally last the trip without spoiling. Be sure to store it in a sealed container to prevent a disaster in your pack, though.
