When planning your meals while in the wild, does anyone take into account the nutritional value of the foods, especially the caloric values associated to them?  

I started thinking about this when I was reminiscing a Philmont trip with the scouts long ago. The meals we could choose from there to pack for our trip were picked out especially to help fuel us for the 10+ days of hiking we did.

As a runner I always do the carb loading to help prepare for races, but haven't really applied it to trips to the Q. This year that will change however.

I was just curious to see if anyone else thought about this to get the maximum amount of energy out of their foods.

D

I prepare a list of all of the food items I plan to carry on each trip. I mainly track weight, total calories, calories from carbohydrates, calories from protein, and calories from fat, but include whatever information is on the label.  

I add and subtract foods and amounts until I get close to the total caloric goal (~3000 calories per day) and my preferred ratio of 50%:25%:25% (carb, protein, fat). So far my ratios have been closer to 75%:15%:10% and I haven't died or bonked (well, bonked hard once for lack of water) yet. Because of the understatement of fat calories on most food labels, my fat percentage has probably been closer to my goal than I thought. Using 3000 calories a day has always left me with excess food, so I have been trimming that back for recent trips. (I didn't follow my normal planning approach and packed in (and out  :'() about two extra pounds of food on a backpacking trip into the St. Croix State Park last weekend).

On group trips in the BW, we plan meals pretty much the same as regular meals (with little regard for nutritional content)  ;D, then bring what can be dried or is already lightweight. My group usually includes 2-1/2 vegetarians (it's complicated) and we all like spicy Mexican and Cajun food, so we have quite a few meat optional, bean, rice and/or tortilla based dishes.

-aj

We had a similar discussion here:

  (You need to Login or Register

Lots of good info ;D

solo, thanks for the link. I did do a search however before I started this thread because I thought there was a good chance the topic had been covered. apparently I didn't search with the right words. lol   Thanks again though, and same to you asmjock