Re: Food for the backcountry

Donald Newcomb wrote:
"Patrick Grady" <patrickgrady1@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:C7idnVL0IdPtRq_ZRVn-rw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
After a recent trip, I was wondering what kinds of foods work best in
providing high calories without adding too much weight??

Carbs and fat, every thing else is decoration. Ounce for ounce (gram for
gram) carbs all pretty much same-o, same-o. If you could just drink and
digest olive oil, that would work real well, but you would get a terible
case of the trots. Rice, pasta, bread, oil, fat; those are the staples.

Carbs average 4 calories (kilocalories actually) per gram of
weight, as does protein. Fats average 9 calories per gram.
Of course eating solely fats is going to make one sick,
although a lot of people can do nicely with a blend like
trail mix. Proteins are harder to digest, and frankly the
human body doesn't tolerate copious amounts of protein
without an adjustment period.

And are you talking about weight or volume? If you're
trying to cram as much as you can into a pack or a bear
cannister, oil is only slightly more calorie dense than
pure carbs. Pure sucrose weighs a bit under twice as
much per unit volume compared to most vegetable oils.

There's the famous Kendal mint cake used on the first successful
ascent of Everest. I don't know if I could live off of
peppermint flavored sugar cake for weeks though. I've seen
it at REI although I can't figure who would willingly eat that
stuff as a staple.

<http://www.kendal.mintcake.co.uk/product-range.htm>

.

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