Can your best food beat this?

[Flux]

Lay's sour cream and Cheddar potato chips are 160 cal/oz. Some of the other flavors might be close to that. About the best I have found for cal/oz

Goldfish are 140 cal/oz.

My buddies looked at me funny when they saw the lay's bag in my bear can, but they certainly devoured them on a lunch break.

If you want high cal/oz stuff, start with junk food. Granted, these may not be the healthiest snacks, but they sure do taste good!! I guess having kids has made me eat a bit more junk food these days.

[tim]

Nut brittle is my favorite (I prefer cashews or almonds to peanuts). Keeps forever, very compact, has both fat and carbs, usually about 170 cals/oz. Probably not the most healthy thing to live on though. We also like taking flavored almonds (salt & vinegar or BBQ) to make lunches more interesting. Nuts are apparently the healthiest high calorie food you can get:
http://www.healthaliciousness.com/artic ... -foods.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[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!