Can your best food beat this?

[AlmostThere]

Ideally most of your calories should come from carbs, not fats or protein. But as noted above, it is impractical to carry enough high carb foods to meet the caloric targets. Since fat has 2x the calories per gram than carbs, that is what is easiest to carry.

Alas... so many of our daily good nutrition habits must be put aside when traveling the backcountry.

Been studying up on winter backcountry travel for search and rescue. Some of the literature is suggesting 25-30% of the diet should be fat while going skiing/shoeing/mountaineering in winter.

[oldranger]

As I recall from reading about early Arctic and Antarctic explorers they used to eat butter straight to consume enough calories.

Mike

[vandman]

Trader Joe's Crunchy Salted Natural style peanut butter has 190 calories per serving(32 grams, which is is slightly more than an ounce). For me this is the perfect backpacking food--it's compact and comes in a plastic jar for easy, no mess access. I blend local honey into it before the trip, and in the backcountry I eat it for breakfast either by the spoonful, or on a Wasa cracker. It keeps me going until lunch time. I never leave civilization without it.

[sirlight]

I blend local honey into it before the trip

I did the "mix the PB with the honey" method once. I just assumed it would work. Lesson learned for me to never bring something untested on a long hike. It turned into a "crystallized" very thick paste. It was almost unpalatable. I could barely convince myself to eat it. If I remember correctly the PB might have been Skippy, not the natural style stuff.

Does the natural PB & honey mix suffer from this same problem?

[vandman]

I didn't have that problem at all. The natural style pb has peanuts and salt, no strange additives. I blended 3/4 pb with 1/4 local honey, and hiked with it for 14 days. Of course it was gone on day 14 so I licked the jar clean.

[sirlight]

Good tip, and thanks for the "recipe". I'll have to give this a shot next time I go hiking. I actually prefer the natural PB anyway. The main reason I brought Skippy was concerns over it separating. Better off without all the transfat and additives anyway!

I have always loved PB&J. I ate it every day for lunch all through grade school. I have thought it would make a great trail lunch too, but did not want to mess with the jelly on the trail. Plain PB is just not sweet enough for my tastes.

I recently found some Justin's brand in PB & honey flavor and also hazelnut cocoa. These are the ones in packets. A little pricey, but they sound tasty. Can't wait to give 'em a try!

[Hetchy]

Fritos corn chips -160 calories per ounce ingedients: Corn, Oil, Salt
To save volume I smash my Fritos into a powder and eat them with a spoon.
Nutella Hazelnut spread- 153 caloreis per ounce 18g carbohydrate, 8grams fat
Fried shoestring potatoes (dried from a can) -150 calories per ounce
Snickers Bar -133 calories per ounce
My all time favorite snack on the trail is a Snickers bar dipped in Nutella Hazelnut spread or the blessed Peanutbutter or both!.. OMG! (Much salivating! )

[BSquared]

Wow, Hetchy, that's remarkable glacial polish on the granite that your plate is sitting on!

[Cross Country]

I personally like to eat simply. It gives me more time to fish (or do other thing I like), and keeps me at a good body weight too.

[Flux]

French's French Fried Onions 180 Cal/Oz

Not the best snack, but could be added to things for a calorie wallop.

[Cross Country]

Trout aren't that low in calories. Almost any food high in protein are at least fairly high in calories. I don't know about you but I nearly always ate lots of fish, making it high in calories. On my last day of fishing I would cook (smoke) enough fish (filleted) for the next nights camp on my (our) way out.

[Wandering Daisy]

Try 10 days straight on nothing BUT fish (no extra oil allowed for cooking). You may then change your mind that trout are high on calories. Once I did a 50-mile, 4-day survival walk-out living only on fish, and I was hungry! When you actually have to make miles in addition to fishing it gets harder to live on fish. And, given my fishing skills, trout will never be "high calorie" for me! I have never heard of anyone getting fat on trout. But there is nothing better than fresh trout while backpacking. Interestingly, after four days on nothing but trout, in spite of being hungry, I had little appatite for more fish.