Your Appetite while Backpacking?

[SSSdave]

Since I just packed up my food for an 8 day trip on my Excel sheet, here is 10.3 pounds worth including containers like Ziplock bags. Weight in grams. And we will be eating trout too.

136.4 MH beef strog noodles
139.3 MH beef strog noodles
136.8 MH lasagna
152.2 MH spaghetti ms
176.9 MH chicken dumplings
172.2 MH spaghetti ms

166.4 Kn rice cheddar broccoli
167.7 Kn rice cheddar broccoli
119.5 Id 4 cheese m potatoes
212.3 Gouda aged cheese
194.5 Ga salame
53.0 Mi rice 1/2 cup
58.4 Mi rice 1/2 cup
58.8 Mi rice 1/2 cup

145.1 Po granola oat alm honey raisin
210.4 Po granola oat alm honey raisin
211.8 nut mix
150.1 peanuts
88.4 dried cranberries
143.3 Mi flour tortillas 9
105.0 Ho orange cupcakes 2
156.7 Na Animal cookies
288.6 Ke Pop Tarts Unc brown sug cin
52.6 Lu blueberry bar
333.1 Au cracker mix 8x6

102.9 Wo hard caramels
103.9 Skittles
169.5 Br candy corn

128.7 Kl strawberry
104.9 SM hot choc 3 tea pkg 5

201.9 sugar/b
54.5 salt/c

4,695.8
165.6366843
10.35229277

[bobby49]

No coffee?

[SSSdave]

No coffee?

As a young adult I preferred to socialize visiting coffee shops versus bars as have never much enjoyed alcohol. But at age 20 suffered a splenic artery pseudoaneurysm that has kept me just a few steps away from eternity the rest of my adult life including staying away from any stimulants including caffeine that is in many drinks and food products. Note the tea I listed is non-caffeinated herbal. Generally I've also rarely taken any medicines including most head cold virus products.

[Gogd]

Food! My favorite topic. Used to be my second favorite, but we change with age!)

The short response to the OP questions: My appetite is always big, unless I am pretty sick. I eat big meals, sometime five times a day. I eat the equivalent of four portions of freeze dried meals for each breakfast and dinner. Yet I am normal size: 5'11", 170#. Mom was relieved when I moved out!

Certain observations on the posts herein: Suppressed hunger in the backcountry? Based on what most describe eating on their backpacking trips, no wonder your appetites are suppressed. And if you think modern commercial camper cuisine sucks, be glad significant product improvements have occurred since the 1960s. On a more serious note: I find downing a fresh cup of Joe the first thing I get to camp provides a second wind, and improves the appetite.

Back around the time we finished making all the dirt we figured earth would need (and a friend invented fire to make our rancid carrion meals taste less gamey), there was a brand of backpacker food, Drilite (sp?) that was genuinely toxic. I am convinced they were on the dole with Katalyn, making so many hikers sick that people were convinced it was due to bugs in the water; hence why so many today believe they need to carry around those stupid water filters. The go-to brand of camper food was Richmoor – yea that’s how bad backpacking food was back then. Richmoor had this one meal combo my scout troop foisted upon us hapless troopers: Pilot Biscuits with Zippy Cheese Spread. Pilot Biscuits were a white flour hard tack puck, about as flavorful as an unsalted soda cracker that was left in the clothes dryer lint trap for six months. When I say puck, I meant literally like a puck – one scout actually broke a tooth trying to masticate one of these cuspid busters into small enough chucks so that he could get it down his gizzard. As for the cheese spread: we understood it to be cheese, because that is what the package said. The conspiracy theory spread, however, that it was actually hot orange, edible, emergency signal paint developed by NASA that scout masters could use both to summon help as well as offer up as an alternative to being cannibalized by ravenous scouts, who refused to be subjected to another ration of Drilite food poisoning. So the biscuits found purpose as Frisbees, while the cheese spread made a decent sun block and excellent glue to repair delaminating boot soles.

As they say, the truth is stranger than fiction. Back in the days of piolets with ash stocks, artic and high level mountaineering expeditions sometimes provisioned the larder with Kendel Mint Cakes. KMCs were a one pound confectionary sugar brick, with the consistency of a chewy candy cane. The stuff had a shelf life of unknown duration; samples found in King Tut’s tomb taste as fresh as last week’s batch. I once went on a trek where the leader insisted everyone considering a summit bid had to consume one cake per day. The theory was we’d get a bunch of calories from the cake alone, even if we lost our appetites for any other food while up high. Tell you what: to this day I can’t even look at a peppermint candy without my PTSD flaring, recalling that I seriously weighed the merits of being left behind at Windy Corner on Denali, just so I wouldn't have to face yet another day choking down another KMC.

It has been a very long time since I sacrificed my guts and taste buds for the sake of getting anywhere. I have become a foodie, and take great measures to assure my camping meals are appetizing, such that friends have stated my camp meals are better than their home cooking and superior to most restaurants. I have learned how to Frankenstein together commercial freeze dried entrées, sides, various conventional dried foods, select fresh foods and a creative spice kit, resulting in very appetizing dirt bagger cuisine. I use preparation techniques that vary from those on the packages. For example: hot breakfasts almost always are finished in the skillet. I add liberal amounts of butter, olive or peanut oils to dishes, adding depth to their flavor, as well as boost the calorie count. Those packaged foods from REI and the grocery store can be tweaked from as-is into southern style breaded, fried chicken with French fries, or meaty, chili con carne e fejoles, the only thing lacking is a cold cerveza. But for those too lazy to slave over a canister stove, I offer you this delightful experience: Try nibbles of a high quality milk chocolate chased by a nip of fine scotch or bourbon whiskey. The mix brings on a narcotic like, instantaneous buzz that lasts about as long as the lingering whiskey aromatics. It is a really nice desert, even better than Kendel Mint Cake! And you get a big boost of calories without having to force down a bunch of food.

I’ve always had problems maintaining my weight when engaged in day to day cardio activities. As a young man I was a competitive road cyclist, and ski mountaineer. Regardless if you are cycling 300 miles/week, shuttling loads to high camps or doing the Sierra Haute Route on skis, you end up burning between 4000-6000 calories a day. Back home my routine during cycling season often was reduced to eating, sleeping, pooping, work, eating, working out, pooping, shopping, cooking, eating and pooping! Not much time for anything else. I managed to maintain a steady weight during cycling season, but wide fluctuations in weight before and after treks was unavoidable. We’d fattening up like Thanksgiving turkeys so I barely fit into my clothes, then lose so much weight on tour that my street clothes draped on me when I got back home. I needed two belt sizes: normal and post expedition emaciated. Seriously! Some of my corpulent coworkers would look on with envy, as I ate meals triple the size of anyone else at the table. They'd comment “I wish I could eat like that, I hate feeling hungry all of the time”. I tell them one thing worse than feeling hungry all the time, and not eating for health reasons is feeling full all of the time, yet having to eat on top of a full stomach to maintain a healthy weight. They could not wrap their minds around that concept.

Ed

[bobby49]

The whole idea behind the Kendal Mint Cake was that with it, you would never run out of food. Why was that? Because you could never actually force yourself to eat one, and therefore you would retain that one mint cake.

In later years, I discovered that if I was expecting to eat normal food on a backpacking trip, that I would walk myself all day until I was too tired to eat. I would end up getting some calories by liquid, like Cytomax or Gatorade.

[Gogd]

The whole idea behind the Kendal Mint Cake was that with it, you would never run out of food. Why was that? Because you could never actually force yourself to eat one, and therefore you would retain that one mint cake.

LOL! Now I get it.

Oh, but we were made to eat one - per day for four weeks! That was ~30 pounds of KMC per climber that we had to haul five miles from the Kahiltna Airport to base camp, West Rib Route, and of course much of it went up to higher camps. All that peppermint flavor and sugar weight gave me PTSD!

Ed

[Jimr]

Pilot biscuits, aka ship biscuits. There are some of those around from the 18th century that are still, arguably, edible. I used to make them for fun, but I'd use rye flour instead of wheat flour. It gave them some semblance of taste and they were easier on the cuspids. My son would eat most of them. He likes nibbling them as is where I liked to dip in my coffee to soften up and take on the flavor.

[rlown]

hard cheese, summer sausage on small sourdough rolls, Sunkist tuna mixes on a tortilla for lunch, quick cook pasta with pecorino Romano with olive oil for dinner. Trout with spices fried in a pan with more pasta.

Yes, it used to be that way. I lean towards the tuna lunch and the pasta at dinner now. Not a fan of breakfast anymore, but Malto Meal is nice with coffee.
Appetite doesn't kick in for me until day 2.

[SSSdave]

With current inflation, our already pricy backpacker freeze dried meals are even more expensive. Since I ran out of the multi-year supply I'd been ordering directly from Mountain House that used to be least costly, needed a new supply. Poked about on Amazon that confirmed it.

So went down to our local San Jose REI that has just reorganized their store including newly arrived food and indeed found bargains. They are discounting meals 10% if one buys at least 8 meals. Most of the below, I've never before ate, so don't know how my selections will go down and taste. Note, I always bring plenty of cheaper supermarket food while on longer trips for weight efficiency bring some freeze dried meat meals. On my recent 3 night Desolation trip I just brought a much cheaper can of turkey chilli with beans, can of spaghetti with meat balls, Knorr cheddar broccoli rice.

REI-food_7-19-22.jpg

[Igneous]

I always feel hungry when I'm hiking, no real difference whether it's in the backcountry or just a day hike. It was such a surprise to see so many folks report reduced appetite on trips! I tend to eat lots of snacks throughout the day, nuts and dried fruit and crackers and whatnot, and dinner is usually a simple dehydrated equivalent of the sort of thing I eat at home (for instance, bean flakes with couscous and freeze dried veggies) unless it's been a really hard hike and I'm too tired to cook in which case I'll stuff some more snacks in my face and to go to sleep.