How much food weight per day do you carry for a long walk

[under10kg]

I was wondering what others carry per day in gms for long distance walks over 7 days.
I think 700 gms per day is about right for me but I see others carry less.
Any feedback.

[doogs]

This is what I carried on a recent 9 day trip in a remote part of Tasmania, I walked out with enough food for a day or more
Gatorade 420g
Mountain bread 400g
Cheeeese 300g
Tea/coffee/dried milk 300g
Muesli bars 1200g
Home dried Dinners 1200g
Beef jerky 320g
Dried fruit + peanut butter 630g
Porridge 300g
Soups/noodles/wakame/
Curry paste and stock cubes 550g
TOTAL 5620g
per day. 625g

EDIT: This includes the walk in and walk out days so I didnt need 3 meals on those days. So 700g per day sounds about spot on for me too (I weigh around 80kg).

[Liamy77]

So thats 5620g divided by 9 days = 624.44 grams per day

I wonder if this changes much depending on climate and terrain?

[under10kg]

I did try 500 gms a day and I was hungry!!!

[tasadam]

In short, 608 grams, but possible to reduce. To save repeating, see this post - viewtopic.php?p=1183#p1183

[ignavus davus]

800g per day. I like food.

[Macca81]

Im about 450-500 a day. I could get lower if i tried, but im happy with this. Occasionally on the first day ot 2 it can blow out to a kilo plus if i decided to lash out and take a steak

[sthughes]

Overland Track 7.3kg for 8 days (7 nights) = 910g per day
Planning Arthurs for 8 days, likely to be more like 650g per day.

Horses for courses, if the track is easy the extra weight of the gourmet approach doesn't hurt.

[under10kg]

Im about 450-500 a day

Do you get hungry on this amount of food?

[forest]

Per day I take this.....

Freeze Dried meal - Single serve x1.
Noodle Soup (Small packet, just add water)x 1.
Single Latte sashet + 3 sugars x 3 (I love coffee !)
Beef Jerky (50gram Jack Links) x1.
Chocolate Bar (Large, Snickers etc)x1.
Musili Bars (Large 40gram chunky type) x2.
Mini Cheese & Mini Salami Stick (Kraft tasty cheese sticks & the packaged single mini zwiggy type sticks) x 1
Small Chocolate sashets (Cadbury's 2 block packets) x3.
Shotz ReHydrate Tablets x2

Energy Per Day 7168kj Overall weight 508grams

Used to take more but "FOR ME" this works well on multi day trips.
Mixed dried fruit and nuts is a great way to increase the kj's, I used to take them but found I was never hungry enough to need them.

If I'm out for quite a few days I'll often add something to have for dessert one night mid-late trip. Good perk up.

Oh I nearly forgot........ I always take Tic Tac's !!
Staple food source right there my friends

[Macca81]

Im about 450-500 a day

Do you get hungry on this amount of food?

Nope, not at all. Everything is in add water form and i have not had a hungry day since starting to cut down on weight.
I will give a list at some stage with weights, i just need to weigh it again as i didnt do it as individual meals last time, just a daily weight.

[Orion]

I think it really depends a great deal on the person as well as the difficulty and length of the trip. Some people are able to function on very little because they can burn body fat effectively. I ran into one German guy setting off alone to walk the South Coast and Port Davey tracks. He had a very compact pack for what he said would last him up to 14 days. I asked him how much food he was carrying and he told me 400 grams per day. I got the distinct impression that he knew from past experience that it would be sufficient for him. For me that amount would be a disaster.

[bernieq]

I think it really depends a great deal on the person as well as the difficulty and length of the trip.

As you say, Orion, totally dependant on the individual. On several 8-10 day tramps with a 5’ 2” woman, she’s taken 440g/day while I’m at the other end of the scale at 760g/day (not including any packaging). I don’t usually lose weight on this amount …. but I don’t ever gain any, either.

Brekky
Cereal or muslie with added home-dried fruit 90g + powdered milk 25g
Home-dried kiwi, pineapple, mango, apple (rehydrated o’night – the water makes a good juice) 25g

Lunch
12 Vita-wheat (tough enough to survive) 75g, peanut butter 50g, vegemite 15g
Home-made and dried dip (eg homus or baba ganoush – ground so it rehydrates quickly) 30g
Cheese (commercial soft non-refrigerated variety – it lasts 10 days if temp is <30deg) 15g

Dinner
Soup (either commercial packet or home-made and dried) 35g
Home-cooked and dried curry (eg Chicken Red Curry - yummm) 90g
Home dried vegetables (eg, mixture of beans, zucchini, capsicum, sweet potato, corn, mushroom etc) 40g
Carbo base (eg couscous, cooked and re-dried rice or pasta, somen or ramen noodles) 90g

Extras
Chocolate, spare soups, coffee – approx 60g

Not so important over the duration of a 10 day walk is the balance of protein, carbo, etc. More important is the energy content – kJ/100g. Go for the foods that have the highest energy density. For example, which would you take as a meal base? Dehydrated potato (eg Deb) or couscous? Couscous has more than 4 times the energy !

IMO, if you enjoy food and are thinking about the weight you carry, dehydrating your own allows you to control flavour, texture and weight – and, ultimately, enjoyment.

[under10kg]

Bernieq you carry very similar food to me like dried homus.
I tend to take some dried apples or similar and instant custard powder for desert as an extra.

[Phil S]

Is there a commercial dried homus available in Sydney?

Also, Bernieq, re your dried homus, do you mean you grind the dried slab into a powder?

[Moondog55]

About 750 to 900 grams per day. I like to eat well and I love food. Also I tend to use tinned food a lot so water and package weight adds up

While food is always an individual thing on longer trips it depends on how well you can burn body fat and also how much extra body fat you are carrying.
I could stand to loose 12 kg easily.
I suppose I should carry less food per day than I actually do to increase my weight loss.
12kg of body weight is 6 kg of fat so I could probably survive quite well on 300 grams of food a day for periods as long as a fortnite, always depending on the energy density of that 300 grams
I think I would be hungry a lot of the time tho, unless I also packed lots of non-nutritional water soluble fibre.
I would not try this above the snowline tho, only in summer when keeping warm is less of a problem.

I have at times underestimated the amount of food needed and I do remember one trip where I had to eat oat porridge for 3 days in a row because I had run out of everything else ( including salt, pepper tea and sugar ) 0h!! that was poor planning pure and simple, I needed 3 days more than i thought to cover the distance, a combination of poor fitness levels and really bad weather

[Macca81]

If you could lose 12kg, but only 6kg of bodyfat, why would you want to lose the other 6kg as muscle?

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[Moondog55]

Not muscle so much as water. Each kilo of body fat seems to hold a kilo of water, although this is a generalisation and not strictly true it is a close approximation.
Most of the fluid loss seems to happen at the start, have you ever rendered fat down and seen it start to spit as it warms up?

[Macca81]

Body fat contains about 10% water... If a kilo of fat contained a kilo of water, then it would not float on water because it is water...

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[Graham51]

I reckon Moondog is saying that a kilo of fat has the potential to absorb another kilo of water. That would make it - hang on, it's a bit hard doing the maths - 2 kilos I think.

[Macca81]

But it doesnt absorb that much... Lean muscle can be made up of as much as 75% water, but body fat can not hold much at all.

[Moondog55]

Sort of true.
It does seem to depend on whether it is brown or white fat and how recently the body deposited the fat and also where in the body it is stored.
loosing lean muscle mass depends on many dietary considerations too, it depends on how much of your intake is sugar and protein and how hard you are exercising, slow steady exercise ( easy walking ) makes it easier for the body to mobilise fat for energy use

[kathyk]

I work on 500g per day - hubby and I leave home with 9kgs of dried food for a 9 day walk and arent hungry. Have just done the Larapinta Trail, and my daily quota was between 450 and 500 and I was definitely not hungry! (mind you I lost 7kgs in 19 days!!!) I dry all my own meals and cryo vac them, the 500 per day includes a treat.

[Tortoise]

Could you break that down into what meals / snacks weigh? I've worked down to 650gm/day, but scroggin is still my downfall weight-wise. have started using protein powder stuff, but it's hard to beat a couple of bits of chockie, some nuts, dried fruit, lollies for that energy & morale boost etc. I don't think i can go any lighter on lunch, love my porridge, and have pretty light home dried dinners.

[John Sheridan]

If you take a Multi Vitamin a day, will that reduce the food you need to eat or just stop you dieing in the long run if you get lost or just stop you getting scurvy before you die

Cheers.

[kathyk]

Over many years I have found that the best way for me to take dried food and not worry whether or not I have enough left for the whole trip is that I do it up in individual bags - in the past these were sandwich zipper bags but I now have a cryovac machine so I do that now (it is a little bit more expensive but I am happy to pay). Breakie is always the same - quick oats with the sugar, salt and powdered milk all in their individual bags. Lunch is always the hard one - I allow 4 Vita Weet crackers per lunch, a salami stick, kraft cheddar (as it keeps without the fridge) sticks, and cups of soup. On my last trip I bought the new
Continental cup of soups for some lunches - WOW they were yummy! Also I took a few macaroni cheese packets (these are 85g to a pack and made a terrific lunch on a cold windy day and very filling. So most days it was either soup with crackers or cheese/salami stick. I used to take Tuna packs but these are smelly things to carry the rubbish out so I left them behind and didnt miss them. How much do we need for lunch???? I always find that myself and others in my groups dont need a huge lunch, it is more about the break in carting packs and the social side of a walk. Morning tea is usually a cuppa and some fruit or a biscuit. I found some great individually packed bickies before my last trip - they were 1080kjs per bickie!!! Very nice too and the weight was about 45grams each. My fruit is always wonderful, individually packed for each day and in these packs I have some dried mango, banana, crannberries, almonds pumpkins seeds and a small cherry ripe/twix/or something like that. Dinner is the treat of the day - I never use Backcountry or other freeze dried brands as I think my meals are better. Whatever you can eat you can dry! I even dry my silverbeet, this turns into crumbs but it adds to the dish. I also dry my own meat (mainly mince these days). Prepack all your dinners with veges, meat, flavours (ie dry chilli, curry powder, tomato paste leathers, bolognase leathers, etc etc too many to mention) in the package just put your rice/pasta/noodles in a separate wrap of glad wrap so that when you soak your meal you dont soak the carbs as they go mushy. 500 grams a day is a lot of dried food

[John Sheridan]

What the %^%^%^%^^ is a cryovac, how that works /????>?

Cheers.

[hikingoz]

What the %^%^%^%^^ is a cryovac, how that works /????>?

Cheers.

A cryovac is a brand of vacuum sealer.

http://www.cryovac.com/en/default.aspx

I've used these on hiking trips to take wet foods sealed in meal packets. If they aren't sealed perfectly they breathe after a while, causing the food to spoil. Otherwise they are a pretty good way to keep food fresh a bit longer.

*The cryovac machine I used was a large and expensive commercial machine.

[Moondog55]

Not to forget that "Cryovac" is a brand name and not the process.

Length of storage/shelf- life depends on which packaging you pick, it ranges from single layer ( not really all that useful) to 7 layers with aluminium foil as one of the layers for an O2 barrier.
I think some of the newer military packaging has minimum shelf lives of 10 years mandated

[kathyk]

I thought i cryovacced and the brand name was sunbeam!!!