Thru Hiker Diets - A Backpacking Food Comparison 

Thanks for the vegan option ... as a WFPB Professor Emeritus in Medicine who is getting back into backpacking at age 70 I really appreciate you perspective.

Thank you! I follow the autoimmune protocol and it is nice to see that you have valued your nutritional value, calories, and taste in your pack; keeping yourself healthy, attending to your values, budgeting, and having tasty food. I really appreciate your video. Happy trails.

Thank you so much for sharing this. Tons of information in this video and some solid options for food that isn't just sugar and Mountain House meals

my hiking and backpacking food includes, peanut butter, nuts, dates, dried apples, banana chips etc, oatmeal, granola bars, sardines, beef jerky, trail mix, beans, a little rice or some small packages of stuff like cornmeal mix, noodle fettucini etc, maybe a bit of candy something that prob won't melt easily. maybe a small pack of tortillas or bagels.

Good to see that you're taking on some common misconceptions about trail food. Thanks!

Wonderful video, thank you for the specifics and look forward to your other videos

Great job!!! So clear and orginazed. Helpful video!

I've only stumbled across your videos today and I've watched a number of them. They are really great with excellent detail. Having a plant based diet, I really value your knowledge with regards to nutrition. Thank you Aaron

This was very interesting. A lot of good info ! Please keep up these types of videos!

Aaron, my hat off 2 u !!! For myself I like a higher carb count at lunch but at times the trail ahead determined meal values. I'm a firm believer that food is a tool so use the right tools 4 the job at hand. I'm in total agreement with ur mantra. Education is a gift, pass it on 🙂🙂🙂 Thanks so,so much for your help and time for this and other videos of such nature

Thank you for the valuable information, I can see that you went to a lot of effort to provide accurate and detailed analysis.

very informative! thank you :) and lots of interesting foodie ideas I'm not sure I would have thought of...

Corbin Ky says Hi! And thanks for the video ma’am! I keto and have began my pursuit of the Sheltowee Trace hiker challenge come Jan 2021. Good to see recipes and ideas I can use or manipulate on trail to stay consistent.

I think you have done an excellent job. I wish you great success in your foodie venture.

Another amazing video! Thanks for sharing such valuable info!

Awesome video! I would love to hear about the detailed nutritional comparison of the three diets. Thanks!

What I really eat on the trail: Breakfast: 5 double cream oreo Lunch: 60g salame, 60g swiss cheese, 100g piadina (like a tortilla) Dinner: 100g pasta 60g dried cooked beans+carrots+leek+tomato with olive oil and leftover salame or cheese Snack: 100g between almonds and m&MS, 60g chips Am I doing anything wrong?

this was so informative, thank you!

More videos Please. This was really good.

Another great source! As a new multi-day hiker, I find I currently spend a lot of time researching meals. I would love to get to the point where I am comfortable with the cals/nutrition I pack in my meals and always having many days of prepped meals I can grab from the cupboard and head out the door.

I loved this video! Great info!

Thanks for the quality video!

This was very informative and interesting. Thanks

This is so awesome! I’m delighted to have discovered your channel and would love to hear further breakdowns for what you recommend for carbs / fats / proteins when expending lots of energy every day 😊

Thanks for the video. Good nutrition on the trail is not easy like junk food.

I like really filling dinners when backpacking. Light food stuffs do not do it for me. Oatmeal with a scoop of peanut butter in the morning, pitas bread with cheese salami and mayo for lunch and a nice dinner.

I’m happy to see some alternative trail meals. I generally eat a very low carb/cal diet because I am pre diabetic and I have noticed so much of what many hikers eat is all carbs and sugar. I know that if I were hiking all day I would need to eat more carbs than usual but I still want to maintain a diet more similar to what I normally eat. Food for thought.

Good video, nice and clear explanation. Thanks

This is very interesting thank you so much for sharing take care my friend

Would love to see suggestions for other diets/swaps for keto and paleo diets :) this was a great video!

Great video, thanks for the pointers :-)

Hey Thanks always great video

Peanut butter on a Kind bar! Wonderful, Thank you!

You are awesome, thank you!

This is great! Thanks.

As a vegan, I tend to eat too many carbohydrates. Fat has 9 calories per gram while carbohydrate and protein has 4 calories per gram, so a lightweight calorie dense diet for backpacking will be heavier on the fats. Hiking will definitely burn the calories and a fat rich diet isn't bad as long as they're high quality fats, not artificially hydrogenated fats that have traditionally been found in snack foods.

Another great video and I apologize for asking all the questions, not even sure you're still monitoring this vid. So you've come up with a nice healthy selection for your daily intake, you're hiking the AT and you start out packing say 6 days worth of your food. Now it's time to repack are you mailing out your homemade stuff for you to replenish every 6 days or are you now at the mercy of commercially bought food and how do you maintain your healthy eating then?

Diet is totally not the same as daily day life with individual especially in thru hike, some people hike with light load at 30 miles/day. Some people hike with 30-40 Ibs of load and hike about 10-15 miles/day.

Thanks for the wealth of information.💝

The nose wipe to the left nostril and transference to left leg at about 7:30 without missing a beat was well done. But truthfully I'd have to be abandoned on a desert island before I'd eat any of that over packaged and processed stuff. My home prepared meals apart from high fat keto shake and coffee in the morning for a week weighs about 2.2 kg. But saying that it was a well balanced and very informative professional video with lots of appeal. Thanks

Thank you for sharing even with is europeen peolole, interesting and helfull ! Little question concerning parmesan (great receipie you have !): isn’t it an issue to have parmesan with you in the trail ? I thought this should be kept in low temperatures (4 to 8 dégrées C). Flo

so much food and weight is still low, great informative video.

At what length of hike do you recommend starting a multivitamin? I haven’t worried about it for trips under 2 weeks.

Great video. Nice options. ✌️

Vacuum sealing is brilliant. I don’t know why I’ve been fussing around with ziploc bags this whole time. As a vegan hiker I also do lots of meal prep before going out mostly out of necessity. It’s super cheap since I buy things in bulk and then just pack it up into various recipes.

The tropical trail rice sounds awesome! Where can I get the recipe?

Wow! Your food looks amazing!!

So many AT thru hikers seem to be sugar addicts hiking like zombies to the next town or gas station for their next fix. Does all that walking really provide a good excuse for them to be pouring candy and cookies down their throats at the rate they are inclined to do? Seems it would be a good time to optimize health and drop excess weight for those who need to, not look for excuses to indulge in more garbage foods.

Only in Us! You show what is needed for 2-3 days. But i still like the video.

What does your menu cost per ounce when you add in the postage to ship it to your resupply locations? Your plan is fine for the first few days when you have food from home, but on a thru hike you can't carry the entire hike in food from home. If you aren't buying locally in the trail side towns, you have to ship the food from home and that isn't free. So it should be included in the cost.

When you recommend CPF percentages, you should explain what the percentages represent. Weight? Calories?

Very helpful. At 6:12 you say for "typical diet"; do you these change for long distance backpacking?

Vegan here, attempting to thru hike the AT in April 2020. Almost all of my food is being sent in 5-10 day increments via drop boxes with few exceptions (Damascus, Roanoke, Charlottesville, anywhere that has a Kroger or Walmart nearby). Have been prepping all my own food and have spent roughly $270 on almost five months of food, including over one hundred (yes, I've counted) Lära, Clif, Luna, and Kashi bars which I've found on insanely good sales. Breakfast will almost always be instant oats with chia seeds and nuts chased by instant coffee, snacks will be an energy bar, vegan trail mix, powdered peanut butter on a tortilla with bananas or apples if I've picked some up in town as a little treat for myself. All of my dinners, with the exception of ramen noodles, are homemade using real veggies and have been dehydrated. High-protein vegan Mac n cheeze, chickpea curry, eggplant curry, lentil soup w/dehydrated tomatoes and spinach, mixed vegi soup with alphabet pasta shapes, high-protein pasta with sauce, rice n beans, and a dank veg chili with textured vegetable protein! There's a lot you can do with 10lbs of rice, dried beans, spices, and some research and creativity. If you're a fellow vegan and feel stumped on meal ideas, I hope my comment was able to help. Edit: If you don't have a dehydrator, using an oven or toaster oven set between 120-150°f will work just as well. It might be more costly and use more electricity, but it gets the job done Edit 2: if you don't have a Costco membership, you can get a Costco gift card without having a membership. Right now they've got bulk packs of trail mix, jack fruit meals, and coconut clusters that are vegan friendly and are great for drop boxes.

How long a hike can you do this for though? I presume you aren't carrying 2 weeks - 6 months worth of food with you all at one time, so how do you home cook your meals for a thru hike? I'm off on a 2-3 week thru hike next week, but can't see an alternative to buying food en route. I could prep meals for the first 3 days or so, but after that it would just get too heavy I think!

This is one of my fave videos! Do you like to cook on the trail too?

Just subscribed...enjoy your approach...however, how are you able to create “your” meals on a thru hike like the AT? 😊

Thanks for the video. I'm also a vegan/vegetarian, I'm starting my PCT hike in about 3 weeks. I prepared all my re-supply boxes almost the same as you. I feel a lot better now after watching your video. Wasn't sure if I was doing the right thing. I feel a lot more confident now, thank you.

Yes, I did my thru hike and I made 7 months of meals, which no one did in 2011... So I am obsessed with the numbers... this is great information. Please break more information down about the exact numbers overall... it helps to "digest" what functional fuel is being fed and flowing through the body, and how that works... BEST for you, but bottom line, we are all humans, and can take queues about digestive matters very well... Let's see some new stuff!?

hi🌷 Good job, they all look doable but how do u carry a 3 day supply of food & water, is there any room left for the tent, electronics & filter ? It wud take me a wk to eat that much food, guess I still haven’t found my real hiker hunger yet, my little dog did, was kinda funny!! u can cook for me anytime! 😊🐾

I can’t take all the sugar and sodium in packaged foods. Love your tips!

What is in your coconut ginger drink for breakfast? That sounds good.

Thank-you! Any thoughts on Ghee? Macadamia Nuts???

Great video! Thank you. Do you have Suggestions for packing food 3500-5000/day for 10 days. I understand it’s personal preference but was wondering what works for you? Do you pack each day’s food in one large ziplock or was that just for demonstration purposes? Thx!

Oh yeah. Sooo good info. This is how I like to eat but no vegan I'm good on cobalamin. And foraging greens helps folate.

great video, as someone who needs to lose weight any low calorie lunch ideas for someone who is hiking just during the day, my hike is around 6 miles but I tend to do a couple of miles more on top

Her homemade food sounds so delicious and i didnt know olive oil came in airplane bottles lol

You demonstrated what makes life so interesting , diversity/variety. Or as I liked to say before the foreign cars became popular... Everyone doesn't drive a Ford. Basically interpenetrated... Different folks , Different choices.

I don't know who this woman is but she seems nice :). I backpack but don't know too much about what to eat while out so I think this might help

Any of the 3 is "ok" , but honestly in #1 I would ditch the cookies, honey bun, trisquits and cheese. #2 I would ditch the Fritos for better chips, and trade the snickers for a better chocolate snackbar. #3 I would ditch the cookies and snickers for something healthier that was still chocolate. All 3 could use some improvement, but they are ok. They are really individualized, so to each their own.

I’d really like to have much higher vegetable content. How to get that in? Also curious how to cut the fat down for myself, because at 67 I really don’t need it...I typically hike 10-12 miles a day, not pounding the dirt all day!

Grape Nuts with powdered milk and a teaspoon of sugar is a very high calorie overlooked breakfast for backpacking.

Love all those different options, but I am missing some more environmentally aware packaging solutions - there is just way too much plastic everywhere ...

Dumb question, but why the olive oil? I know that roman soldiers got a daily ration of olive oil, but it's new to me that Hikers do this too now. :D

Do you have the link to the middle hikers diet? Very interested in knowing the exact amounts of each food he/she used.

I now prefer Aldi rice dishes - red beans and rice, dirty rice and Jambalaya, each with some crumbled Butler Soy Curls for protein. The Butler Soy Curls are a better tasting version of texturized vegetable protein (TVP). It's a great meat substitute, on the trail or at home. Available on Amazon, along with soy sauce powder, coconut milk powder, Real Lime crystals, dried shitake mushrooms, dried refried beans.... Butler Soy Curls also make GREAT vegan jerky using any jerky recipe, and it's a wonderful option for hiking if you can avoid eating it all on the first day.

5:50 why do you use bottles of oil instead of packets for olive oil

The other food is no competition to yours!! Yours looks WAY better

Can you do hiking meals for diabetics?

6 days food in my pack weighs about 7 lbs for 5000 calories, using single serve tuna, spam, Twisted Flavor Co. 3.5oz flavored couscous packets, dehydrated mountain meals, peanut butter, protein bars, Epic bars, coffee, and ramen noodles. Your list was for 1 days food if I'm not mistaken @ 2.6lbs. If so, that means 6 days meals would weigh 15.6 lbs, double the weight of my food; too heavy for my taste, pun intended . Great video, short, informative, and to the point, I just think the supply list was a bit heavy for the calories.

Are you truly hiking if you're not surviving off of candy though?

They ADD metal shavings for the iron! :(

Can I get a video on protein options I need 220 g of protein a day a lot of the backpacking videos of a higher carbohydrate higher fat just looking for More protein options while fishing and hunting when I can’t cook

Anyone else notice that the percentages added up a bit off? 102%, 103%, and 99%. Shouldn't theses all equal to 100%? Not trying to be mean or anything, but my math OCD is doing epileptic fits in my head right now seeing those totals.

I eat a Keto diet but on trail not so much especially dinner. I am still able to eat mostly keto but not 100 percent. I eat mostly store purchased dehydrated meals for dinner and for those most part I think things have worked out well. I have only done about three weeks on trial at a time so I am not sure how things would go after say four months or more. What does concern me is as an older person who is in very good shape and not having much fat on me to begin with is if I was to start losing weight that it would be muscle weight. Being in my 60s I really can’t afford that. Just something I think of. When I do hit a town I will eat an insane amount of food. Normally about every 4 or 5 days I tend to end up in town if only for part of the day. I don’t take many zeros.

how many miles can you hike w/ all that

How about bringing rice, beef, seasonings, tortillas and so on rather than bringing the usual processed foods?

Hi could you please send me the link for the peanut butter thanks for sharing best wishes

I am a new vegetarian by choice. As I’ve began my journey I’ve found that I feel great plant based but as I learn more I’m concerned with being able to balance all the vitamins etc that I need. I’ve learned that vegetarian people are deficient in b12 etc etc.... any idea on a easy way to make sure I consume all that I need for proper health?? HELP!!!

What olive oil bottles are those?

Snickers and whiskey is where it's at.

I can’t eat crapppy tooo gotta have good food trying to find yummy ways for dehydrated fruiy

and you forget the cost of postage to ship your resupply

This is my first time watching you. Where did you get those tiny bottles of olive oil? I've never seen those before!

How about resupply

This has Macros!!!! Well done. This is a big miss on other food videos.

I'm not a vegetarian or a vegan. But it is beginning to interest me, to improve my health and for the environment. So can you do a video on vegetarian options for hiking. I'm not interested in vegetarian or vegan stuff posing as meat. I do like a lot of vegetables and fruits, I enjoy humus. I normally do a high protein, carb diet. But for a through hike that's going to change

check out Poshi by Velma Farms, they are vegan, no sat fat, gluten free, non GMO Fresh Veggies in a light weight sealed package, 1.76 oz ... I've had the green beans, asparagus, artichoke hearts, and cauliflower.... healthy, packaged well, light weight. yummy!

suddenly feel like i'm eating nowhere near enough

That rice sounded awesome, you have a recipe?

I usually run from "registered dieticians" the state brainwashing and disinfo is almost as bad as that provided to doctors and dentists.... but did find some good info in your post. Keep up the good work,