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On my very first tramps, I used to eat muesli for breakfast, muesli for lunch, and muesli for dinner. I got bored and tired and realised that a yummy mix of dried fruits, seeds and nuts – aka scroggin mix – is a small step toward happiness. Indeed, eating better is good for both your body and your soul. Notice that the scroggin mix is a snack rather than a breakfast. Then I got a cooker to have a warm dinner. Commercial dehydrated/freeze dried sport meals like Backcountry Cuisine is an easy solution. A much cheaper way – but less nutritive – is to use all-in-one mixes or even better: make your own mixes.
Plastic waste is a critical point when it comes to choose food and challenging when thru-hiking. I avoid single use packages, prefer taking in bulk, and reuse plastic bags. Unfortunately, recycling is not common nation-wide in New Zealand so I didn’t bother looking for recyclable stuff. I preferred burnable packages so that I could light fire in huts. Also, biodegradable stuff like tea leaves or coffee ground could be buried, therefore reducing weight!
The (or at least my) reference book about tramping food is New Zealand Backcountry Cooking and the reference book about edible plants is A Field Guide to the Native Edible Plants of New Zealand by Andrew Crowe. I used Manuka and Kanuka leaves for my tea (even tastier with goji berries and dried apple pieces), moss and Rangiora (Brachyglottis Repanda) leaves as paper toilet. The large Rangiora leaves could also be used as paper when the intentions book is full and you run out of paper.
If you like to drink or eat many different things, don’t hesitate to take everything in small quantity, but too much is useless. Eat a smaller amount of food enhance digestion. Eating food too quickly or consuming to much in one go create indigestion, gas and sometimes fatigue. However, I would prefer a kilogram of fine food than a kilogram of camera gear. It makes the walk more enjoyable. Plus the amount of food reduces along the track.
Read the article in my Patreon page.
The worst in New Zealand is actually your stupidity… and infected streams. So avoid animal grazing areas. Microbes are stored in sediment, so avoid disturbance of lake beds when filling water bottles. Avoid drinking untreated water from any surface source when the water is visibly cloudy due to fine sediment or when it is rainy (capturing rainwater on a tent fly – details below – would be a safer option under wet conditions.) Water from lakes, remote from river inflow, will usually be safe owing to sunlight disinfection and sedimentation. Vegetation cannot grow where they are constantly submerged, so when the water level encroaches on this terrestrial vegetation, that indicates the state-of-flow is high, and is best avoided for drinking.
How I get rain water from my tent fly:
Treat or double treat water if in doubt. For example, chemically treat first, then stand the transparent plastic bottle on sun during lunch for an extra UV treatment, and use the more doubtful water for cooking only (because it had been boiled in addition.) Usually, I treat water with DCCNa tabs (f.i. Aquatabs and Micropur Forte MF 1T). Notice that I would not use the Micropur Tabletten MC 1T since it just keeps water drinkable, but doesn’t kill existing bacteria/virus.
Product | Components | CAS No |
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Aquatabs |
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Micropur Forte MF 1T |
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Micropur Tabletten MC 1T |
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I prefer chemical rather than filter treatment because DCCNa is more efficient and lightweight compared to a filtering straw. The swimming pool taste of chemicals is not that bad and reminds me that finding a clean water source – that doesn’t need treatment – is important.
Avoid spreading bad stuff and reduce flies, bury toilet waste more than 50 m away from water sources and busy areas. Do not wash hands directly in water sources.
According to a Wilderness Magazine reader survey, 4 out of 5 trampers carry chocolate and more than 50% carry tea and coffee (based on 900 replies.) A hot drink is a hunger break, it saves food! I love coffee but I could not enjoy raw coffee at the beginning, I needed some milk and tasty honey (or sugar). My recipe for one super large cup is:
Mix milk powder with cold water since it does not dilute as well in hot water.
My taste changed later on. I used to drink Mocha while wwoofing for Roger. I only drink Flat White and Long Black since then. I do not like much sugar anymore. Really tasty Bean Bags or fair trade organic instant coffee (4 g ≈ 2 tsp + 250 mL boiled water) can be found in most supermarket if you pay the price. JetBoil is great but the coffee press is a gadget, I would rather use a bean or tea bag or instant coffee instead. Also, if the JetBoil is not well clean, coffee may taste weird… so the best is to have a cup just for coffee and water.
Note about caffeine: found in black and green tea, chocolate, cola and coffee, caffeine prolongs the action of adrenaline, increases pain and stimulates the action of the heart muscle. So it could be used as stimulant when feeling tired. Do not drink more than three cups a day. Prefer coffee with caffeine since “It perks you up when you’re feeling a bit lackluster, it can alter your perception of fatigue, and might even enhance performance.” Kathy Fouhy
Also, shortbreads are good with coffee!
I had my first porridge based on a powder mix thanks to free food left in a hut, it was a labeled plastic bag with coconut milk powder, cacao, dates and chia seeds. It was pretty good and the friendly tramper inspired me to make my own tasty breakfast.
Ingredients for one tramper (140 g per serve, including bag):
Topping:
Freeze dried fruits have the taste and nutrition of fresh fruits but they are expensive (NZ$11/40g) and hard to find. You can replace with 4 heaped tsp dried fruits to the mix (cranberries, white mulberries, black mulberries, goji berries) but it would be less nutritive and sweeter.
Oats are filling. Enough to forget food for a while and focus on the real adventure. But a full stomach moves slowly, so too much oats is wrong.
Before tramping: Pack the dry mix into a labeled, re-usable and resealable bag. Indeed, food rationalization is critical to avoid shortage. I try not to waste plastic but a paper bag is too fragile for the tramper’s standard.
In camp: Add boiled water, stir well and enjoy! If possible, simmer for a couple of minutes to allow the oats and the freeze dried ingredients to suck more water.
The Anton’s Porridge: peanut butter, rolled oats, ground cinnamon, milk powder. Anton took peanut butter very seriously, other would prefer Nutella, other would take both, with some maple or golden sirup, cacao powder, NZ apricot… It's healthy if you are active!
You want to impress trampers in hut? Just bake scones. I actually feel like a real man when I can bake scones in the middle of nowhere. You want to be considered as a serious tramper? Baking scones, walking off-track, carrying a PLB and letting know your intentions is an impressive combo.
Ingredients for three sweet scones:
Before tramping: Pack the dry mix into a labeled, re-usable and resealable bag.
In camp with the JetBoil cooker equipped with its frying pan extension and a frying pan:
Notes:
Anton – the fellow tramper – used to skip lunch, and had mini snack breaks instead. Indeed, I realised that lunch is the less important meal of the day, and one or two snack breaks are enough to pump me up. This section gathers bread-based recipes for a savoury break. Best served warm, I would cook in camp and would not store fresh bread.
Ingredients for three savoury scones:
Before tramping: Pack the dry mix into a labeled, re-usable and resealable bag.
In camp: Follow the Super Sweet Scones process. For extra taste and fat, add 3 tsp olive oil to the soft texture and oil the fry pan for a crispy taste. Oil also helps cooking deeper in the scone. Topping could be cheese (40 g / 3 scones) and Vegemite1 (1 tsp / scone). Vegemite has a unique taste, people say that you love it, or you hate it. I love it, especially in the tube format, easy to manipulate. Yogurt powder tastes like cheese, so it’s a lightweight and durable alternative.
Olive Dukkah is great with savoury scones and pasta, it’s light, tasty, dried, with 100kJ/5g, composed of:
Notice that cooking three fancy scones consumes less gas than basic pasta and offer countless possibilities. Indeed, you can bake scone, pancake or flat bread depending on the amount of water you add to the dry mix.
The recipe requires no more than 3 ingredients:
It is enough for a 15cm-wide, ½cm-thick flat bread.
Instructions:
Easy and tasty:
Wrap bread from the supermarket is the easiest solution and can be packed for up to 3 days, but baking your own bread is so much fun!
Raw nuts are healthy for tramping but you may prefer the super tasty roasted and salted nuts with caramel flavour, yet less healthy but the most important is to like it. It can be found in bulk in many supermarket (in New Zealand). Snack must be rationalised because:
The process of rationalisation could be like that:
Note: Pure Delish is the only NZ-wide brand baking large energy bar (400g). That is a great way to reduce plastic waste.
Snack ideas:
For 165g of snack (the amount of serves depend on your hungriness, but I would say 2 serves):
Ingredients for about 16 (543 g) energy balls (34 g each):
Instructions:
Ingredients for 13 shortbread (319g):
Instructions:
Idea:
The pasteli bars are yummy and resist a wide temperature range (+25°C as well as -10°C).
Ingredients for 15 (170 g) Pasteli Bars (11 g each):
Instructions:
The panforte is a long-lasting and virtually indestructible snack. It is baked at home and packed already cooked. The recipe is based on the great New Zealand Backcountry Cooking book.
Ingredients for quite a lot:
Instructions:
This loaf is less compact than the panforte and may require a plastic box to carry. It is baked at home and packed already cooked. A drizzle of maple syrup or honey is great. The recipe is also based on the New Zealand Backcountry Cooking book.
Makes 1 loaf:
Instructions:
The recipe is like the ANZAC biscuit filled with rich ingredients. The ANZAC biscuit is the most famous biscuit in New Zealand and Australia and used by the joint army of the same name – just “ANZAC” without “biscuits.” I haven’t find the best recipe yet, hope you will share it to me! Also, think about different shapes: biscuits, slices, squares, etc.
Ingredients for one tramper (144 g per serve, including bag):
Before tramping: Pack the dry mix into a labeled, re-usable and resealable bag.
In camp: Put the dry mix into 250-300 mL boiled water, stir well (and simmer for 3-4 minutes if possible) and wait 10 minutes.
Couscous is fast to cook, tasty and compact.
Ingredients for one tramper (132 g per serve, including bag):
Before tramping: Pack the dry mix into a labeled, re-usable and resealable bag.
In camp: Add 200 mL of boiled water to the mix, stir well and enjoy!
A small and lightweight frying pan is super useful.
I eat my pasta with pine nuts grilled on a frying pan, walnut, basil and a pesto sauce – only for the first three tramping days due the fresh pesto mix. Fresh solid cheese also strengthens taste (f.i. blue cheese, parmigiano). For longer trip and optimal meal, prefer freeze dried cheese.
My favourite pasta are the Pam’s Finest Dry Tortelleni (in New Zealand), 125g / serve, but any fast cooking pasta is okay (90g per serve).
I do not carry fresh fruits or vegies – too heavy. Capsicum, ginger and garlic are the exceptions. Those lightweight ingredients last long and boost taste.
Butter or olive oil add extra taste to pasta but it makes cleaning tricky. In order to absorb grease, use half tsp baking soda, 2 drops of water, and 3 fingers. Also, avoid any leak of your bottle of oil.
During my winter expedition Whitish Dusk, I carried 14 days of food including porridge, snack, and dinner in a 5 kg dry sac. My rations were both tasty and feeling enough. Some ingredients – such as freeze dried blueberries, dehydrated mushrooms and tomatoes – added a real fresh taste to the meal but they are expensive. Fair trade organic coffee was also important to me! I only used recipes complying the following requirements:
So, it wasn’t just a matter of calories!
As you can see in the above picture (that you can zoom on click hover), the top row is porridge (1973 g), the middle row is snack (1112 g of energy balls, Pasteli bars, and dried fruits) and fair trade organic instant coffee (100 g), and the bottom row is dinner (7 serves / 920 g of couscous mix, and 7 serves / 1006 g of mashed potatoes mix.)
I compartmentalised meals (breakfast / snack / dinner) into coloured cotton bags that I put together into a dry sac.
There are three main classes of food and all provide energy:
Based on nutritional labels from raw ingredients (not taking into account the boiling / cooking process), the daily intake is as follow. Notice that the analysis has been done after the hike.
Intake Per Day: | |
---|---|
Energy: | 577 Kcal |
Protein: | 23 g |
Carbohydrate: | 61 g |
From Sugars: | 16 g |
Fat: | 24 g |
From Saturates: | 10 g |
Fibre: | 22 g |
Salt: | 0.77 g |
Intake Per Day: | |
---|---|
Energy: | 244 Kcal |
Protein: | 6 g |
Carbohydrate: | 80 g |
From Sugars: | 73 g |
Fat: | 13 g |
From Saturates: | 3 g |
Fibre: | 4 g |
Salt: | 0.016 g |
Intake Per Day: | |
---|---|
Energy: | 438 Kcal |
Protein: | 18 g |
Carbohydrate: | 71 g |
From Sugars: | 24 g |
Fat: | 7 g |
From Saturates: | 1 g |
Fibre: | 17 g |
Salt: | 0.5 g |
According to the Harris–Benedict equations revised by Mifflin and St Jeor in 1990:
BMR: | |
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Men: | (10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) - (5 × age in years) + 5 |
Women: | (10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) - (5 × age in years) - 161 |
The amount of daily kilocalories is the BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) multiplied by the Physical Activity Level which is about 2.2 for a vigorously active person. In my case, I would therefore need about 3,400 kcal in order to keep my weight. It was actually about 1,259 and that explains my weight loss.
Considering the macronutrients, the theory is:
kcal/g | % of total kcal | |
---|---|---|
Carbohydrates: | 4 | 50 |
Proteins: | 4 | 15 |
Fats: | 9 | 35 |
Fiber (complex carbohydrates): | 14 g / 1,000 kcal |
The problem raised by the above table is that a sufficient amount of carbs, proteins, and fats require heavy meals impossible to carry. Therefore, the idea is not to reach 3,400 kcal but to have fair enough with a good balance of macronutrients:
Actual Daily Intake: | Balanced Daily Intake: | |
---|---|---|
Energy: | 1259 Kcal | |
Protein: | 47 g | 47 g |
Carbohydrate: | 212 g | 157 g |
From Sugars: | 114 g | |
Fat: | 43 g | 49 g |
From Saturates: | 14 g | |
Fibre: | 43 g | |
Salt: | 0.6 g |
Pretty good but more fats and less carbs would be even better. I lost weight but haven’t felt hungry a single moment though. Symptoms may appear if thru-hiking and the idea would be to optimize the serve weight to nutritious weight ratio (as nutritive as the following industrial meal) or drop food more often to carry less.
Notice that the balance of carbs/proteins/fats is on a daily basis and I would manage to have a meal richer in carbohydrates for lunch, and richer in proteins for dinner.
Now let’s compare for example my mashed potatoes mix with the industrial Beef Teriyaki by Backcountry Cuisine (which used to be my favourite meal before I did my own and before I became vegetarian):
The nutritional information is reduced to 100 g of dried mix2.
Mashed Potatoes: | Beef Teriyaki®: | |
---|---|---|
Energy: | 281 Kcal | 433 Kcal |
Protein: | 16.7 g | 20.6 g |
Carbohydrate: | 40.5 g | 51.9 g |
From Sugars: | 5.7 g | 15.9 g |
Fat: | 4.4 g | 16.1 g |
From Saturates: | 0.9 g | 5.0 g |
Salt: | 700 mg | 1359 mg |
Notice that the nutritional information of the mashed potatoes mix is based on the nutritional information of its composition, while the Beef Teriyaki had its chemical analysis after reconstitution. I mean, I am probably comparing apple to orange, so take it with a grain of salt.
I have to admit that this industrial freeze dried meal is more nutritive, but doing my own mixes waste less plastic, is more compact, certainly vegetarian, made from many organic ingredients – no added Maltodextrin in my recipes –, cheaper, without additional food colouring, and filling enough!
Other ideas of improvement:
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