Backpacking Food Planning#

These are my notes to help plan food on multi-day backpacking trips.

It’s written for healthy adults doing normal recreational backpacking. If you have a medical condition that touches diet or hydration, the general numbers here are not for you. Talk to someone qualified.

1. How much you need in a day#

Start with these daily targets, then adjust by appetite and how hard you’re hiking.

• Calories: 2,500 to 3,000 a day to start. More calories for hard days.
• Macros: 50% carbs / 30% fat / 20% protein of your total daily calories. More carbs for hard days.
• Protein: bodyweight in pounds × 0.6 to 0.7 = grams per day. For most adults that’s about 90 to 130 grams.
• Food weight: calories ÷ calories-per-ounce = ounces you carry. Aim for at least 100 cal/oz, ideally around 125, which puts a day’s food near 1.5 to 2 pounds.

Calories#

A hard day can burn more than you can comfortably carry and eat, so most backpackers run a small calorie deficit on trip, and that’s normal and fine for a few days. If you think you will have some harder days, bring more carbs.

Calorie density and weight#

Calorie density is calories divided by weight (calories per ounce). Higher is better when you’re trying to carry less. The math: if you need 4,000 calories at 100 cal/oz, that’s 40 oz of food a day; at 125 cal/oz the same calories weigh 30 oz, about 3 pounds saved over a five-day resupply. Food is usually your single heaviest pack component, so this is where weight savings are easiest.

Rough targets:

• Under about 80 cal/oz: heavy for what you get. Fresh fruit, most canned food, anything packed in water.
• Around 100 cal/oz: a reasonable weight.
• 125 cal/oz and up: what you want for most of your food. Olive oil (~250 cal/oz, among the most calorie-dense foods you can reasonably carry), nuts and nut butters (~160 to 180), chips and fried snacks (~150), powdered whole milk (~140), granola (~130), many candy and energy bars (~120 to 130).

GearSkeptic has a big list of foods color-coded by density that’s handy for browsing. Don’t build the whole food bag from the densest items, though; you still have to want to eat what you carry. If a food is heavy for its calories and not bringing much else, swap it.

Protein#

Protein supports muscle repair. Aim for roughly 0.6 to 0.7 grams per pound of body weight per day (about 1.4 to 1.6 g/kg), toward the upper end on hard trips. This is more proten than most people normally eat, but multi day backpacking puts more stress on your muscles than everyday life.

• Adjust to your route: the low end on easy days, the high end on hard days.
• Spread it across the day. Your body uses protein better in moderate amounts at several meals than in one big dinner: a little at breakfast, some in your trail snacks, the most at dinner.

Good protein sources: jerky and meat sticks, tuna and chicken packets, powdered milk, cheese, nuts and nut butter, protein bars or mixes, dehydrated refried beans, and meat or beans at dinner.

Carbohydrates#

At an easy walking pace, most of your energy comes from fat, and you can get away with a higher-fat, lower-carb menu. But the harder you work, the more your body leans on carbohydrate (muscle glycogen). Push hard enough on too little carb and you “bonk”. So on hard days, make your snacks carb-heavy.

You don’t need to weigh carbohydrate every hour. For backpacking, snack regularly and favor carbs on hard days.

Fat#

Fat has the most calories per gram of any macro: about 9, more than twice what carbs or protein give. Olive oil, nuts, nut butter, and cheese are dense and light. Use fat to add calories without extra weight, but keep enough carbohydrate for the hard parts of the day and enough protein for repair, and favor a mix of fat sources (nuts, olive oil, dairy) over one saturated-fat block.

Fiber#

Aim for about what you normally eat, which for most adults is 25 to 38 grams a day (roughly 14 grams per 1,000 calories). The trail is a bad place to suddenly load up on unfamiliar high-fiber food.

2. What nutrients you need, and when#

Section 1 covers your daily totals. How you spread them across the day matters too: carbs while you’re moving, protein at meals to repair, fat for calories.

Breakfast#

Mostly carbs, with a little fat and protein, to get moving on.

On the trail#

Most of your calories come from here. Take in carbs with a little protein, in small amounts and often rather than one big stop. The harder the day, the more carb-heavy you go.

At camp#

After a long day, a snack with carbs and some protein can help with recovery. Carbs refill glycogen and protein supports repair; keep it low in fat, which sits better right after hiking.

Dinner#

Most of your protein for the day, plus carbs to refill glycogen for tomorrow.

3. Water and salt#

You lose sodium and water through sweat, and both sweat rate and saltiness vary a lot between people and conditions.

Normal trail food is salty: chips, jerky, cheese, crackers, ramen, dehydrated dinners. Eating normally covers most people’s sodium needs without any special product. Electrolyte products help when it’s hot and you’re sweating a lot, especially if you’re a salty sweater (gritty skin, stinging eyes, white marks on your clothes). On those days a drink mix or salt tabs are a reasonable addition to salty food; otherwise you usually don’t need them.

Drink to thirst rather than forcing water on a schedule: taking in far more than you want without replacing salt can dilute your blood sodium (hyponatremia), which is dangerous, so don’t pre-load liters “just in case.”

4. Further watching#

GearSkeptic’s “Eat by Numbers” series is a thorough free resource on this, and a lot of the structure here comes from it. If you only watch a couple, start with the first two performance videos.

• Defining “Ultralight” Food for Backpacking: the calorie-density argument and why food weight dominates your pack.
• Performance Nutrition, Part 1: Optimal Trail Fuel: fat vs. carbs by intensity, and what to eat for breakfast and on the move.
• Performance Nutrition, Part 2: Optimal Hike Recovery: recovery and dinner, including the carb-plus-protein recovery idea.
• Performance Nutrition, Part 3: Hydration Strategies: water needs, sweat, and the dangers of both under- and over-drinking.
• Performance Nutrition, Part 4: Electrolyte Balance: the actual electrolytes and how they fit with hydration.
• Performance Nutrition, Part 5: Advanced Electrolyte Supplementation: deeper into electrolyte products; only if you’re fine-tuning for long, hot days.
• Hiker Food Chart 2.0: how the food chart works if you want to browse foods by density.
• Planning an Ultralight Backpacking Menu: watching him build a full menu end to end.

Sources#

The numbers here are starting points for healthy adults on ordinary trips. Where I gave specific figures:

• Protein in the 1.4 to 1.6 g/kg range: ISSN position stand on protein and exercise.
• Carbohydrate around 30 to 60 g/hour during sustained hard exercise, and fiber at roughly 14 g per 1,000 calories: general sports-nutrition and dietary guidance, not a single source.
• “Drink to thirst” and the risk of overdrinking: exercise-associated hyponatremia consensus statement.