Food

For the uninitiated, here is a rundown of basic need-to-knows about food on the Trail:

Taste

Pack food you know you like. Try new foods before your hike or while on a zero day. Don't pack something into a maildrop without trying it first just because it was on sale or a blog recommended it.

Calories & Nutrition

The occasional Snickers bar is fine, but your diet needs to be full of whole grains, protein, and fats. We go into a lot of detail about caloric and nutritional needs below.

Cut Weight and Bulk

Always repackage foods into Ziploc bags. If the contents of a Ziploc can be confused with something else, label it with a Sharpie.

Ease of Preparation

Probably 90% of hikers keep their food preparation limited to boiling and adding water. Anything else is a hassle except to the most passionate foodies. It is important to have meals that require no cooking/heating in case you run out of fuel, your stove breaks, or it's raining and you'd rather not run a stove in your very flammable tent.

Fuel Efficiency

A lot of just-add-water dry foods like couscous and rice have cooking times prominently displayed on their packages. Never get something that takes longer than 5 minutes. Also, thinner angel hair cooks faster than regular spaghetti. Longer boil time = more likely to run out of fuel. We discuss this in more detail on the dinners page (coming soon). 

Cost

Convenience does not have to mean expensive. MREs (military jargon for meals-ready-to-eat) and the civilian equivalents marketed to campers like Mountain House or Backpacker's Pantry are expen$$$ive. Yes, even MREs  from a military surplus store are expensive. Don't bother. Supermarkets are filled with options that are both delicious and cheap. Buying in bulk at Costco or Sam's saves even more money.

How to Resupply Groceries

You have two options: buy as you go while hiking or mail boxes of food to yourself. The details are outlined on our food resupply page.

During the first two weeks of a thru-hike, something strange happens. Many hikers lose their appetite. This is because of your body's reaction to your sudden and dramatic increase in physical activity. We discussed this phenomenon earlier on our physical preparation page under the heading "The Two-Week Switch" but here we want to emphasize the need to eat.

Literally overnight the thru-hiker goes from little to moderate daily exercise to intense physical activity that lasts all day. Only Olympic athletes work out for so long, day in and day out. To cope, your body diverts blood from your digestive system to your muscles and your appetite declines as a result.

We have found that big meals, especially in the evening, are the hardest to finish. Forcing yourself to finish a big dinner is tough. Since the worst thing you can do is not eat, a good strategy to cope with the loss of appetite is to eat small meals or snack throughout the day. It takes about two weeks but eventually your appetite does return so when meal planning, consider packing a lot more snacks and fewer big meals for at least the first week.

Sometimes you might start to feel depressed and discouraged. Without something happening to trigger bad thoughts, you start thinking about quitting or get angry with your hiking partner. Maybe a minor frustration like a clogged water filter drives you to tears. When this happens, you probably just need to eat something. Hangry is a real thing. So if you are feeling down or angry, stop and eat a Clif Bar. It's miraculous, and vividly demonstrates how emotional well-being is connected to physical well-being.

There isn't much good science out there on how many calories someone burns while hiking. Lots of numbers are thrown out in forums and magazine articles, but it's difficult to know whether these figures have a medical basis or are just guesses that have been repeated enough to become quasi-factual in people's minds. A search of academic medical journals for studies of long distance hikers turned up no results.

Adequate meal planning requires an estimate of calories burned each day. That estimate is tricky because of the many variables:

your weight               your speed         your age            fitness level

your pack weight       terrain type        your gender      number of hours hiked

Websites such as Health Status, Self Magazine, Calories Count, Calories Lab, and My Fitness Pal, have free calories-burned calculators to help us make the estimate. We have doubts about their accuracy and scientific underpinnings, but they are best available at the moment.

After averaging the results from multiple online calculators, we created this chart:

An important caveat: this chart accounts for just two of the eight variables: weight & time. That said, the results can give us some idea of how many calories the hiker needs, and this will help with grocery shopping & meal planning.

Pig-Out in Town

Regardless of how well you shop and plan meals, daily calorie deficits are likely. During all of their thru-hikes, our editors lost weight. Sometimes as much as twenty pounds. So stuffing yourself silly while in town is important. Order some pizzas. Buy a lot of fruit at the grocery. You may experience the strange sensation of being both full and still hungry at the same time since you can max out the capacity of your stomach before fully making up the deficit. Eating continuously throughout the day during a zero day solves that problem.

Intense Cravings

Fantasizing about comfort foods like pizza and ice cream is normal. However, if you start having intense cravings for specific or strange things, or begin thinking about food constantly all day, even after eating, then you are likely running a severe calorie and nutritional deficit. At the next town it's very important to pig out and eat a wide variety of food.

Because of the calorie debt issue and subsequent weight loss, we occasionally come across blogs that advocate gaining weight before a thru-hike, in anticipation of then losing that weight. The idea seems to be that you can lose the "right amount" of weight by doing this, rather than losing too much weight and then looking gaunt or emaciated. We strongly discourage anyone from gaining weight (purposefully adding body fat) before a thru-hike for two reasons: hiker experience tells us it doesn't work and it's bad for your overall health.

1)  We have met and talked with hikers who gained weight pre-trip and the results weren't good.

Extra body fat made their hikes even more difficult since their muscles had to work harder to support and carry a heavier frame. After working carefully to reduce their pack weight, the extra body weight was like shoving 10-20 more pounds back into the pack. Their knees swelled more. Their feet hurt more. They found themselves short of breath more often. They hiked slower. They were more prone to injury. The reasons to have a small pack weight are also the reasons not to gain body fat.

2)  It is bad for your long-term health.

Huge fluctuations in your body weight are bad for your health. You cannot simply add body fat without also increasing cholesterol levels, putting stress on your heart, and taxing your body's use and production of insulin.

Finally, the gain-lots-of-weight-before-hiking plan is based on an assumption that severe weight loss is inevitable. That simply isn't true. While some weight loss is natural and healthy and should be expected, severe weight loss is both uncommon and preventable by eating correctly. How to eat well while backpacking is discussed below.

Attempting to maintain pre-trip weight during a thru-hike is both a bad idea and unrealistic. All of us could stand to lose at least a little weight. The ideal scenario is one where you lose body fat and gain muscle during the first month of the hike, producing a modest overall net-loss of body weight (5-15 pounds, depending on the individual). After that, your weight should plateau and remain constant the rest of the trek. Continued weight loss is a cause for concern and indicates you need to change what you are eating.

You want to most bang for your buck, or more precisely, the greatest number of calories for the weight. Here are the standard calorie/weight ratios provided by the National Institutes of Health:

Fat =  9 calories per gram
Protein =  4 calories per gram
Carbohydrates =  4 calories per gram

Alcohol also contains 7 calories per gram, but alcohol has a way of creating unintended zero days. So fats (and that includes oils) provide the greatest amount of energy for their weight.

Unfortunately, much of the dry food that keeps well and so is well suited for backpacking is also refined carbs. Whether we look at instant white rice, ramen noodles, mac&cheese, breakfast cereal, and especially snacks like granola and energy bars, we find a lot of processed carbs. These provide a lot of energy, but not for very long, since non-whole grains and simple sugars are digested very quickly. Blood sugar rises after eating but soon digestion ends and blood sugar drops.

On the other hand, whole grains, proteins, and fats are broken down much more slowly and so the energy they provide is more consistent and sustained between meals. Eating lots of these foods mitigates the cycle of energy spikes and crashes. On the breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks pages (coming soon) we discuss specific items found in Florida grocery stores. Below is a brief overview of what to look for when grocery shopping.

Whole Grains

The conundrum for backpackers has always been that we carry a limited fuel supply, and whole grains like brown rice, for example, take more time to cook than instant white rice. Longer cook times equal more fuel spent, and we don't want to run out of gas. 

Fortunately things are changing. Today there are many more whole grain options than just ten years ago. You can find things like whole grain spaghetti, mac&cheese, and instant brown rice at most supermarkets. Whole grains still cook slower however, so the strategy is to buy thin — get angel hair pasta instead of regular spaghetti, in other words.

Proteins

Understanding backpacking food means rejecting the incorrect correlation between protein and meat that persists in American culture. Uncooked meat must be kept refrigerated and will not keep on a backpacking trip, with jerky, some sausage, and single-serve packets of salmon being the few exceptions. Nevertheless you can have a diet rich in protein while on the trail.

On-trail protein sources include jerky, single-serve salmon packets, powdered milk, Carnation instant breakfast, sharp cheddar cheeses, nut butters (peanut, almond, and cashew), plain nuts, and vegetable protein supplements like TVP and hemp protein powder. 

Healthy Unsaturated Fats

Healthy unsaturated fats come from vegetables and nuts, not meat. Examples include plain nuts (almonds, peanuts), plain seeds (hemp), olive oil, vegetable oils (corn, sunflower), and nut butters (peanut, almond, cashew).

The calorie count of any meal can be increased by the simple and easy addition of fats and proteins. Moreover, since so many freeze-dried meals are refined carbohydrates, adding fats and proteins to these meals will provide more consistent and sustained energy (see above).

We have found that a three-meal-a-day routine does not work well on a thru-hike. You use so much energy so quickly, that too much time between meals leads to blood sugar crashes and fatigue. And the longer the hiking day, the longer the gaps between meals. Snacks can help fill the gaps before and after lunch, but we recommend a two-lunch strategy for sustained energy.

Eating two lunches splits your hiking day into three equal parts, which can then be further divided with short 5-10 minute breaks. For example, in the first week of your thru-hike when your daily mileage is low, your day can be divided up this way:  after eating breakfast and breaking camp, hike 1.5 miles and take a 5-10 minute break. Then hike another 1.5 miles and eat 1st lunch. Hike another 1.5 miles and take a 5-10 minute break. After another 1.5 miles have 2nd lunch. Repeat that pattern until dinner for a total of nine miles.

Not only does this strategy prevent fatigue and provide sustained energy, it makes increasing your daily mileage easier. Over two weeks you can double your daily mileage from 9 to 18 miles by adding an additional half-mile between breaks (see chart below). An extra three miles per day is less demanding when broken by breaks and 2 midday meals into half-mile slices.

Consider how much more your body must adjust when increasing from 9 miles a day to 18 with just one lunch. To reach 18 miles a day you must hike 9 miles between meals — which previously was your mileage for the whole day. That's a big jump for your metabolism to make, leading to blood sugar drops and fatigue.

There are a dizzying number of articles on the web about cooking meals while backpacking. Every backpacking magazine or website seems to have a "top ten backpacking meals" list. Every backpacker with a blog writes about their favorite meals and recipes. Most of these folks aren't chefs however, or even passionate foodies. So we went on the hunt for websites and blogs devoted exclusively to cooking on the trail, written by chefs and foodies. If you enjoy DIY projects, hate pre-packaged options, and want to take the time to actually cook on-trail (not just boil water) then these sites are for you:

On the next few pages we provide a guide to breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snack foods found in the actual grocery stores found along the Florida Trail. If you plan to resupply on-trail rather than rely entirely on maildrops, here is an overview of those groceries:

Vegans and others with dietary restrictions, even basic allergies, cannot resupply here. Needless to say, organic, all-natural, cruelty-free, non-GMO, and gluten-free options aren't on the shelves.