HELP! Winter Day Hike Nutrition (FOOD)

[Raven]

Logan bars, bake them yourself, last forever in dry state, don't crumble, high calorie
Walt

I used to love Logan bars until I didn't. I'll never eat another one but they were great for a few months! Good choice.

 

[Mike P.]

For our Scout trip to the Allagash this past summer, we made Hudson Bay Bars. It was mostly Butter, Molasses and Oats with some other sweet ingredients. (Some recipes have Karo and honey instead of molasses.)

 

[peakbagger]

There is always the old standby pemmican. http://www.skilledsurvival.com/how-to-make-pemmican/.

Its pretty revolting stuff to me, definitely an acquired taste. I also think it has the side effect that when eaten, the stomach goes into full digestion mode and robs heat from the extremities. That is the down side to many winter meals, even though there is need for calories the processing tends to cause short term cold issues.

Hot Jello seems to be the S&R folks standard. easy to digest and full of quickly digestible components

 

[DayTrip]

Hot Jello seems to be the S&R folks standard. easy to digest and full of quickly digestible components

Stupid question on the Jello (never made it in my entire life): do you simply pour the Jello packet in the prescribed amount of water and drink it on the spot? It doesn't congeal and get hard to drink (i.e. choke hazard)? (I assume you pour boiling water into it but then have to let it cool off enough to safely drink, at which point I assume is when it would start to congeal)? There must be some sort of energy drink powder nowadays that would get the job done more efficiently no? Always curious about this because you still see it referenced in many guides and books (including the WFA manual I bought two years ago).

 

[Mike P.]

Jell-O for winter use is to put it in a thermos as a sweet high sugar drink. To "jell" it has to sit in a fridge for awhile. I guess eventually it would work at room temp. Very good for a day trip but unless you kept reheating it, after sometime, it would solidify in your thermos.

When I was younger and was on my pool's swim team, we ate it just in powder form for quick energy.

 

[egilbe]

Double the amount of water called for when making it and it won't jell

 

[jniehof]

Stupid question on the Jello (never made it in my entire life): do you simply pour the Jello packet in the prescribed amount of water and drink it on the spot? It doesn't congeal and get hard to drink (i.e. choke hazard)?

Make in a thermos in advance, with the total amount of water in boiling form. It usually calls for something like 1c boiling water followed by 1c cold water...just do it all boiling. It doesn't start to set up until lower than room temperature and even then it's not a choking hazard: people do eat the stuff fully congealed and it doesn't require chewing.

Since going vegetarian I've switched over to Kool-aid type stuff (most of the vegan jellos are also sugar free), which also avoids any ethical dilemmas if I meet someone who's hypothermic and Jewish.

 

[ChrisB]

Hi gang,

Some great ideas here and a few I'm going to try.

Thanks,
cb

 

[dave.m]

The author of this is a dear friend. Nutrition PhD retired from Framingham State with work with military. Former AT complete section hiker.

She recommends more carbs in the winter. Plenty of great recipes.

http://thru-hiker.com/articles/pack_light_eat_right.php

 

[Mike P.]

Great Info Dave, thanks. Thinking our Boy Scout Troop may be able to use some of the recipes also.

 

[jniehof]

You're "lucky" I'm home sick and have no attention span, so I'm finally going to bang out my list.

• Grocery store chewy granola bars
• Clif bars. Sometimes I remember to cut them up first. Sometimes not.
• Those packs of crackers with cheese in between. Tend to crumble so eat early in the day.
• Bagels with hummus (cut up).
• Crackers with cheese cubes
• Alton Brown's protein bars. That episode has two other bar recipes (including a good riff on marshmallow-rice krispie bars) but this is the one that works best for me.
• GU. No I never eat it but I bring one just in case. Handy for rubbing in the cheek of someone who's nonresponsive.
• Clif shot blox. Rarely eat but this is what I carry for more normal "just sugar" use. Cran-raz or margarita.
• Tailwind. Okay this is the pure sugar I actually consume. I do one bottle of water and one of tailwind.
• Trail mix. Mixed nuts and berry mix and honey cashews and butter toffee cashews and cinnamon almonds and dried fruit and dried mango and dried pineapple and bridge mix and dark chocolate peanut m&ms and dark chocolate cherries and dark chocolate marzipan. Mix up in a big batch every month or two. These guys get a ridiculous amount of my money and no, I don't get kickbacks.
• Ginger miso eggplant jerky. I've done a portobello jerky too but this is better.
• Sticky rice cakes from Feed Zone Portables. Chocolate coconut blueberry recipe here...if you quarter the recipe it'll go nicely in a loaf pan. They don't keep for more than about a week and don't freeze well at all. So worth the effort though.
• Muffin tin frittatas, also from Feed Zone Portables. One recipe here. They keep and freeze pretty well. Again I get no kickback on the book, but I do think cycling food is a good reference point for hike food, as a somewhat lower intensity all-day activity.
• Just thought of it a couple of days ago, but going to try bringing those horrible hand-sized fruit pies (think like the McDonald's apple pies) and slapping a hand warmer on about an hour before eating.

EDIT: And stroopwafels.
EDIT2: Fig Newtons. How could I forget fig newtons.

 

[peakbagger]

FYI , those horrible hand pies are basically composed of two parts, the filling which is actually not that bad basically cooked fruit and sugar with a gelling agent and the crust which is horrible to most. It basically flour and whatever room temp hard fat that is politically acceptable. These days Palm Oil seems to have replaced Transfats as the hard fat of choice although I expect good old lard still shows up in the cheap Dollar General tabletalk lookalikes. Best thing to do is throw away the crust and eat the filling or do as a long distance hiker I once met did and vacuum seal packs of canned fruit pie filling for energy shots.

Little Debbie was a very late adopter of palm oil instead of transfat and Lance the maker of the packaged crackers also delayed it as long as possible as transfats had far longer shelf life (years) then Palm Oil which can go rancid unless appropriate chemical stabilizers are added. Many of the military MREs were made with transfats and I dont know if they ever shifted over to Palm oil. Hard to worry about eating healthy when someone is shooting at you.

The boomer generation is probably the most impacted by transfats. I expect the damage from transfats will be showing up in autopsies and heart surgeries for another 30 or 40 years as that grand experiment works its way through the system.

 

[jniehof]

Best thing to do is throw away the crust and eat the filling or do as a long distance hiker I once met did and vacuum seal packs of canned fruit pie filling for energy shots.

Ha. We always did pie filling in two pieces of bread with the "tonka toaster" in the fire. Brings back memories.

I try to lean more towards "real food" stuff I make myself but some prepared stuff is awful convenient. You're right that it's smart to distinguish between "caloric but I'm burning it" and "not terribly healthy for reasons other than calories." I wouldn't bring more than one of the pies in a day.