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Food and Nutrition

Nutrition
Generally speaking, a hiker needs to eat a diet balanced between the 4 food groups just like anyone else, and even more so because of the exceptional physical challenge of the hiking. Preserved hiking foods lose some of the nutrients they had when fresh. It's important to pick foods that have the full selection of nutrient types.

Perhaps the best chance to eat a balanced diet comes during town stops. One can buy fresh foods in grocery stores and restaurants. If cooking facilities are available at whatever lodging the hiker is using, highly nutritious meals can be prepared.

Meal cooked in lodgings in a town.
Spinach, Onion, Cauliflower, Avocado, Eggs, Bacon

Fresh foods can also be carried on the trail for a few days. Apples, oranges, carrots, and etcetera will survive the bouncing in the pack. Cheese will not spoil. Whole grain bread may end up crushed, but doesn't usually spoil for 3 or 4 days. Perhaps a lunchmeat sandwich or some fried chicken can be eaten for the first dinner and breakfast on the trail without too much chance of spoilage. So a balanced, fresh food diet can be eaten for the first few days out of town.

Let's say there are 10 days of hiking to the next town. That leaves 7 days during which one will need to eat food that is highly preserved and will still be edible after bouncing around in the pack for 100 miles. Dried fruits can provide the fiber and sugar that fresh fruits do. However, many nutrients are lost in the drying process. These can be found in edible wild plants, if the hiker knows which are safe. Vitamin pills are also an option for replacing nutrients in highly processed foods. Crackers, noodles, and mashed potatoes provide carbohydrates. Cheese, powdered milk, yogurt covered raisins, and etcetera can supply calcium. Dried or canned meats or nuts provide protein. All of these foods survive a great deal of abuse and provide a fairly balanced diet to the long distance hiker.

Freeze Dried Backpacking Meals
Freeze dried meals are fairly tasty and convenient. Since their primary market is people backpacking for a few days, they don't need to provide a fully balanced diet. Their nutrients come mainly from white starch and dried meat, so balancing them with other food groups is necessary.

They come in a great deal of packaging, which is required to preserve them for years. But you could repackage them in lighter bags so long as you then eat them in the next segment of the trip.

Many of them contain a sort of collapsible bowl. This is packed out dirty after eating. It's probably OK if you're just camping for a few days in an area where bears and other animals are not accustomed to taking people's food. But let's say the days are hot and it's a week between trashcans. Those bags will be pretty smelly after a couple of days. And that will draw in bears, raccoons, etcetera. Often, it's best to use a real bowl or pot you can clean, rather than the 'bag bowl'.

Calcium Rich Foods
It is the nature of long distance hiking that we walk most of the day, most days, for months at a time. The body will respond to the constant pounding on the feet and legs in a variety of ways. First, it will begin to strengthen the bones taking most of the pounding. Second, small cracks (Stress Fractures) may form over many thousands of steps in bones of marginal strength. The body will need calcium to strengthen the bones and to repair the cracks. If there is not sufficient calcium in your diet, it will take some calcium from other bones, weakening them. And there still may not be enough to properly repair and strengthen your most stressed bones. A stress fracture may then grow enough to put you off the trail and require medical attention. So it's very important to consume sufficient calcium.

The table below lists some of the calcium rich foods that are compatible with long distance hiking. String cheese will keep for a few days, and a Parmesan Cheese Wedge is hard and dry enough that it will keep for a week or more. The others in the table should keep for months.

Protein Rich Foods
As with bones, your walking muscles, ligaments, tendons, etcetera, will need to be enlarged and repaired due to the constant walking. If there is inadequate protein in the diet, your body will rob proteins from other muscles and organs, and will not be able to strengthen and repair your muscle system adequately.

In my hiking career, I have several times run into someone who had tried to hike one of the long trails, but had progressively become weaker until they were no longer able to walk far enough each day, or even to pick up their packs. They had to quit and they never came back and finished! Since I love hiking so much, these conversations sadden me greatly. Don't let this happen to you. Eat enough food from all the groups to keep your body strong!

Amino Acids
There are 20 amino acids, from which all proteins are made. Meat, chicken, fish, etcetera, contain a full spectrum of amino acids. Plant sources of proteins contain an incomplete set of amino acids. Although the human body is able to make some amino acids it is unable to synthesize others. It is essential that we eat those, so they are called Essential Amino Acids. None of this means that the amino acids that are not called Essential are not needed: They absolutely are.

If hikers use plant protein, then, they need to eat a variety of different nuts, grains and seeds to gather all of the types of amino acids. This is done by eating different types of seeds. Beans and corn, for example, are the most famous pair of seed types that together provide a full spectrum of amino acids. Generally speaking, if you're eating both peanuts or tree nuts, and whole grains, you should be getting all your amino acids. The point is to eat a variety of types of nuts and seeds.

I have found that when I eat beef jerky, sometimes the fibers are forced down between my gums and teeth. It is then very difficult to remove, and hurts a lot. That is why I prefer sausages to jerky when eating dried meats. Canned meats and fish also don't stick in my gums, but they weigh more, and the empty cans get smelly in hot weather. Sometimes I eat them only when I'll pass a trash can that day.

White Starch Foods
It is absolutely necessary to eat enough calories. White starches serve this purpose, are cheap and easy to buy even in tiny grocers, and are easy to prepare. However, they contain few other nutrients. For this reason, one should also eat enough whole grains to provide amino acids and other nutrients.

Whole Grain Foods
Whole grains are an excellent source of calories, amino acids and many other nutrients. Some sources of whole grains are better than others. Some grain breads have only a tiny amount of whole grain and a huge amount of white flour. A quick look at some granola bars or their ingredient lists will show that they contain way more marshmallow and chocolate than whole oats. You really need to review the ingredients on the package to see whether you're getting the grain you're paying for.

Dried Fruits
Dried fruits contain the sugar, fiber, and some of the nutrients found in fresh fruits.

Fresh Fruits and Vegetables
Fresh fruits and vegetables contain nutrients that don't survive drying and preserving processes. And they taste great.

You can eat them in towns from restaurants or grocers. Some are hardy enough to survive in a pack for a day or two: Apples, oranges, carrots and onions are examples. So long as they are eaten within a day or two, the extra weight doesn't seem like too much of a burden to me.

Wild Foods
You can also find fresh fruits and vegetables growing wild along trails. Hunting for them is fun and they taste great. I've eaten wild oranges along the Florida Trail, and Prickly Pear Cactuses in Florida and the deserts. Onions, mint, berries, and much more grow in wetter areas of mountains. Pine nuts are a great treat. It's very important to know which plants are safe. Many are poisonous, so skill and a good guidebook are critical to foraging. Bradford Angeir's book Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants has great illustrations and descriptions of wild food plants. He describes the conditions under which they can be eaten, and their proper preparation. I find that most competing guides don't have enough detail.

Edible Wild Rose Petals

Variety and Nutrient Availability
Sometimes, even though a food contains a certain nutrient, our bodies are not capable of using it. Sometimes the fault lies with the food; other times a certain person's body lacks the enzyme or whatever is required to use the specific form of the nutrient in that food. But a slightly different form of the nutrient in a different food can be used. For this reason, we should eat a variety of different types of each category of food. Variety is also more fun than eating the same thing every day.

Vitamin Supplements
Because it's difficult on the trail to eat the wide variety of different foods available when we live in towns, vitamin pills or powders may be a good idea.

Cooking
Over many years of hiking, I have observed that most cooked meals seem to be macaroni and 'cheese', ramen noodles, and similar things. These are available and cheap in the tiny store hikers visit regularly. They keep well for a long time and withstand the beating they get riding in a pack. They provide white flour, oil, and salt, but not much more nutrition. White flour, oil, and salt are available in many foods you don't have to cook. Actually, much more nutritious foods you don't have to cook are available in tiny resupply outposts. So I've decided to not cook. It saves me the weight of the pot and stove, and the time spent looking for fuel, cooking, cleaning, etcetera. My camps don't have cooking odors to draw in bears. I think I would cook if I was hiking in snowy, winter conditions, but these are not typical in my long distance hiking.

Junk Food???
Many things that hikers eat are specifically chosen to have very high calorie content. I've actually seen hikers sort through the candy and energy bars in grocery stores to find the most calories per ounce or dollar.

In normal life we call this stuff junk food. That's because we just won't burn that many calories while sitting at a desk.

But when walking 20 or more miles a day, with a pack, up and down hills, and sometimes when cold and wet, we burn a whole lot of calories. Most long distance hikers slowly lose weight, even while ingesting massive amounts of sugar (raisins, candy, energy bars), starch (crackers, bread), and fats and proteins (nuts, dried meats). So for us, it's not really junk food, but necessary fuel for walking and survival.

Junk Food After the Hike is Over
However, the craving to eat high energy snacks continues long after the hiking is over. For a week or two, while the body is skinny and repairing all of its stressed parts, maybe that's ok. But some guys get really fat after eating so much for months. Since they were rail skinny on the trail, they become almost unrecognizable to friends from the trail.

It's just tough to stop eating after a big hike.

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