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Last summer I spent 15 days hiking with my boyfriend, in Sarek National Park, where there are no places to restock with more food.

The food issue was a major part of the pre-planning, as weight was also of high importance. Looking back, I can already identify a few mistakes I made, but I'd like to hear from other people who are more experienced at taking long trips so that I can be even more efficient next time.

"Efficient" means being not-too-hungry at the end of the day whilst expending the lowest amount of weight. It's important that the food is going to last the full two weeks.

Assume I have no taste at all and don't care about eating the same tasteless thing every day if necessary.

Justin C
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victoriah
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    I would argue that for a 12-15 day hiking trip you wouldn't need to fulfill all your food needs anyway - just stock up on enough calories to sustain you through the day. You don't need a healthy and balanced diet for the trip. – Noam Gal Jan 24 '12 at 20:54
  • That's kind of what I mean by "food needs": just enough to feel fine at the end of the day, it's not necessary to eat enough fibre or vitamins or whatever. – victoriah Jan 24 '12 at 20:55
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    On one canoeing trip, we took a few summer sausages. An inch-thick slice will keep you going quite a while, and they aren't likely to go bad. – Kevin Jan 24 '12 at 20:58
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    and don't care about eating the same tasteless thing every day if necessary <-- This makes me sad. If you are suffering, you are doing it wrong ;) - when you have your tent set, your pot on the stove, and watching the sunset, who wants tasteless? You want a symphony of flavor with that back-drop. Delicious doesn't have to be heavy. – Lost Jan 25 '12 at 02:03
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    After walking 25km in a day everything tastes gourmet :) – victoriah Jan 25 '12 at 09:00
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    This questions is closely related to a-list-of-suitable-foods-for-a-long-hike – Eyal Jun 18 '12 at 10:03
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    Weight i not the only concern - bulk comes into it when packing for 14 days. You need compact, high energy foods. Focus on High fat, high protein. Its easy to overload on carbs as dried, light food is almost always carb based. Too high ratio of carb will leave you feeling hungry even if you have eaten enough. –  Mar 23 '15 at 20:45
  • Relevant XKCD What-If? Turns out butter is the most dense calorie/pound food. – Doresoom Apr 20 '15 at 16:51
  • +1 for Sarek. Been there on a 12 day trek and it was amazing. Also tough. :) – fgysin Aug 11 '15 at 10:20
  • I have read somewhere that people who go clim the Himalaya like to eat M&M's Mars and dehydrated soups. But I guess you can also go with Hardtack. – Vulpo May 26 '16 at 08:14
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    peanut butter has a good calorie density (6cal/g), keeps well, packages easily, contains carbs, fat and protein, no sugar, tastes good, and can be eaten from the pot with a spoon. – njzk2 Sep 27 '16 at 19:38
  • @victoriah 25km in a day :o are you superwomen ? – roottraveller Feb 22 '17 at 09:24
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    @rootTraveller Haha no, i'm actually a super out of shape fat lazy woman. But walking long distances is pretty easy if you put your mind to it. It's just the uphill parts that are hard. – victoriah Feb 22 '17 at 09:26
  • @victoriah I will try my best to inspire from you :) – roottraveller Feb 22 '17 at 12:12
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    Nuts & seeds; hard, dense, whole-grain bread; hard, fat cheese; hard, fat salami. Add fresh green peppers, avocados, boiled eggs, even apples ... for the first few days. (You're going to carry water anyway; might as well carry some of it as an avocado or a pepper.) Leave the pots & pans home - bring one small very lightweight pot or large aluminum cup, more as a general tool than for daily cooking. None to few pots means more and better food (weight) and less time cooking & cleaning. Drink plenty of good water, hot or cold. Skip dehydrated imitation city meals altogether - think peasant. – Drew Jan 18 '19 at 05:05
  • If you don’t mind eating the same thing every day, a combination of beef jerky, high fat nuts like pecans or walnuts, and dried fruit is a complete meal. If you make the beef jerky yourself you save a good amount of money. There is roughly a 60% yield by weight. – mreff555 Jun 29 '19 at 16:01
  • Salami might be an idea. – stevemarvell May 05 '21 at 13:51
  • @NoamGal 12-15 days you do need to watch for deficiencies. That's getting into potentially dangerous territory if you ate zero fat. – Loren Pechtel Oct 06 '21 at 00:53

18 Answers18

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Dehydrated food is key. Water weighs a LOT.

Breakfast -- Any variation on oatmeal. You can make your own or buy prepackaged meals.
Lunch -- Peanut butter on hard tack. (did i mention water?)
Dinner -- Any dehydrated meal will do. I've used both Mountain House and Backpackers pantry.
Snacks -- I prefer Clif bars and Justin Nut Butter for a good weight/calorie/taste compromise. Luna bars are more calories per ounce but (IMO) taste horrid.

By far the biggest weight factor in food is going to be water. If you know your route will have water, carry minimal. I have went so far as to carry only one liter (emergency) and drink from a .5 liter bottle that I sterilize with a steripen or other purifier. Needless to say, you have to be pretty darned sure, because not having water is a huge issue.

Secondly, repack all your food. Even with dehydrated meals you can cut ounces by repacking them all into ziplocs.

Use a very lightweight stove & fuel. A lot of hikers swear by the beer can method here, but I find my msr pocket rocket to be fine. But if you really want to cut ounces, go with the can.

I use a snow peak .7L titanium cup for all of my cooking.

Get a titanium spork. Great weight ratio.

I went a little beyond just food into the whole eating plan, but I hope it helps.

Russell Steen
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    I never carry or purify my water, where I hike it's totally clean, so that's not a consideration for me, but probably for other hikers finding this it will be I guess :D – victoriah Jan 31 '12 at 23:34
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    @victoriah -- That would be awesome and I wish I could. Last I read there is no place in the US that does not have a potential for Giardia. Domesticated animals, including the increased popularity of hiking with dogs, over the entire US has spread this protozoa to virtually every stream in the continental US.

    Now that's not to say that you can't get lucky in the US drinking untreated water, just that it's not a good idea here.

     – Russell Steen Feb 01 '12 at 17:07
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    Dehydrated dinners are extremely expensive for what you get. Consider buying or making your own dehydrated veggies/meats and pairing with couscous. – Corey D Jul 09 '12 at 13:25
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    @CoreyD -- They can be. But by shopping sales and such I can generally get it down to $6/meal. You can do cheaper by dehydrating at home, but $6/meal is less than what most people average on food so I'm not sure I'd call that "extremely" expensive. – Russell Steen Jul 09 '12 at 19:02
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    @RussellSteen you're assuming you get filled up eating one of those, which isn't necessarily the case for high mileage folks. – Corey D Jul 10 '12 at 12:39
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    @CoreyD -- It's just my experience, I'm not assuming anything. I do high mileage hiking and this works for me and I eat 4k to 5k cals/day when hiking. Different people are going to have different calorie needs, which is a separate issue entirely. We buy our food on a compromise of cost+time compared to calories, weight, and required preparation at camp. Freeze dried meals for dinner make a good compromise for me and are not in my experience, "extremely" expensive, even less so when I factor in my own time spent trying to do dehydration at home. – Russell Steen Jul 10 '12 at 15:43
  • @CoreyD -- Here's an example. We stock up during sales so generally pay 60% of the retail. My wife and I will carry this. Even without the sale it is two servings each for $6. However we shop sales, so we generally would only pay $7.2, or $3.60 each for 2 servings, so $1.80 per serving. $1.80/serving is just not extremely expensive. http://www.rei.com/product/768688/mountain-house-beef-stew-4-servings.

    Some people like to do the whole "make your own food thing". That's cool, and I respect that. But let's not mischaracterize the other options.

     – Russell Steen Jul 10 '12 at 15:48
  • @RussellSteen full retail price on those is somewhat obscene. $12 for 1050 Calories is more expensive than most pricey energy sources like Honey Stinger Waffles and Gu energy gel stuff. The freeze dried meals make sense for some but you have to realize you're not getting much for what you pay for. – Corey D Jul 11 '12 at 13:48
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    @RussellSteen: Last I read there is no place in the US that does not have a potential for Giardia. Domesticated animals, including the increased popularity of hiking with dogs, over the entire US has spread this protozoa to virtually every stream in the continental US. Totally false. More info here: http://www.lightandmatter.com/article/hiking_water.html –  Feb 17 '15 at 19:53
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    @BenCrowell - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10737847 The risk is minimal, which is why I said 'potential', but the risk is there and to call my claim "totally" false is hyperbole. There have been confirmed cases of Giardia in the back country. Also, Giardia is not the only parasite out there. As someone who has personally had amoebic dysentery from contaminated back country water... it's not something I'm willing to take chances with even if the odds ARE small. Using a filter is far less hassle than another bout of that. – Russell Steen Feb 17 '15 at 20:49
  • @RussellSteen - You can drink the water untreated in Glacier National Park in Montana. I live on the Canada side and I've been drinking the water from the streams and creeks in the area all of my life. – ShemSeger Apr 06 '15 at 23:31
  • IMO The Lemon Luna Bar is the only edible flavor – rlb.usa Aug 11 '15 at 23:48
  • Does peanut butter offer any advantage over plain peanuts? – gerrit May 24 '16 at 16:18
  • @CoreyD Dehydrated meals are €1.45 per package on Amazon. I can't cook for myself for that money. – gerrit May 24 '16 at 16:19
  • "Any dehydrated meal will do", but will also contain too much salt and sugar, as well as, will come with a ton of plastic. – njzk2 Oct 03 '21 at 19:46
  • I partly agree with @Russell Steen. Perhaps some people wont notice effects from Giardia, but that doesn't mean it is not present. It can lower your immune system,... The difference can show after few days,... In my experience filtering water takes very little time in relation to whole day and I know my water is clean enough. I got poisoning from soo called clean water, where it should be clean. I got fewer, was vomiting,.. That took so much energy away from me(because I vomited all the food) that I hardly came back down from a mountain, had to use last atoms of strength. – Alex J. Jan 02 '23 at 19:22
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Lots of people have posted answers saying what they like to eat. However, the OP asked a very specific question, which was: "What is the most efficient food to take a for a 12-15 day hiking trip? [...] Assume I have no taste at all and don't care about eating the same tasteless thing every day if necessary." She specifically stated that her only criterion was efficiency.

By this criterion, there is one very well-defined answer to her question, which is that she should bring food that is purely composed of fat. Fat has an energy density of 9 kcal (37 kJ) per gram. This is a pretty good approximation for all fats. If you look around for pure-fat foods with very little water in them, basically all you find is cooking oils such as olive oil. For comparison, granola is about 3 kcal/g (12.5 kJ/g), oatmeal 2 kcal/g (8.4 kJ/g), cookies 6 kcal/g (25 kJ/g). So by the stated criteria, the OP should put a large jug of olive oil in her pack.

If you use calories per liter as your figure of merit, you get about the same answer: cooking oil. This is because oil is about twice as dense as most foods that you'd actually want to eat.

Do I recommend a diet of pure olive oil for a 2-week backpacking trip? Of course not, but that just shows that the OP needs to state more realistic criteria. Not only would any human be miserable on this diet, but carbs serve as the primer for fat metabolism. The human body can't digest fat without having carbs as well. Without any carbs, you get ketosis. See, e.g., McArdle, Exercise physiology: energy, nutrition, and human performance, 1986.

A good starting point in setting more realistic criteria would be to decide on some balance of fats, carbs, and protein. A standard recommendation is about 50% of calories from carbohydrates, 35% from fat, 15% from protein.

gerrit
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    That's a good example why I like physicists. Yummy, more oil cooking! – Wills Apr 23 '14 at 21:28
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    Butter might come close to optimal as well. – Joe Manlove Feb 17 '15 at 21:31
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    I had the same thought ;) instead of boring pure fat, I have good experience with dried sausages like salami. But you'll probably want some bread with this as well. That being said, there are a fair amount of cabins just outside the Sarek where you can restock on various foods, like pasta, etc. – Gerhard Feb 18 '15 at 23:11
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    I had thought olive oil, its certainly a good boost but couldn't imagine anyone surviving solely on it.

    How about peanut butter, 5.8 cal/g, 50% fat, 20% carbs, 25% protein. Used (with a few additives) by the WTO to relieve famine.

     – aaaaargZombies Feb 20 '15 at 02:49
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    Just bring peanuts... They are around 60-70% pure fat, and tasty. :) – fgysin Aug 11 '15 at 10:09
  • Ketosis is a good thing, not to be avoided. See The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living – Kevin Panko Aug 26 '15 at 16:04
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    Pure fat would be most efficient only if you can metabolize it all, which I suspect you can't. In The Worst Journey in the World, Cherry-Garrard wrote "[our calorific] requirements are calculated for total absorption of all food-stuffs: but in practice, by visual proof, this does not take place: this is especially noticeable in the case of fats, a quantity of which were digested neither by men, ponies, nor dogs." – Pont Apr 05 '16 at 12:06
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    @JoeManlove re butter as human fuel, the obligatory https://what-if.xkcd.com/126/ – Bob Stein Jul 06 '21 at 15:23
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Rice.

If you have fresh (or purified) water, an amazingly small amount of rice would suffice for 14 days. I've trekked the Cordillera Real for 12 days, and rice was the only reasonable option in terms of weight. A small set of spices - especially salt and pepper - dramatically improves its taste.

If you don't want to eat the same food for 14 days, take other kinds of food (e.g. Pasta) and eat them the first few days, so that you'll carry a reasonable weight afterwards.

Adam Matan
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    Rice can also be easily made delicious! Dehydrated black beans don't weight much and add some flavor. All sorts of spices can be added that also don't weight much. Powedered cheese is a good addition too. As an alternative, couscous is good and similarly light-weight. – nhinkle Sep 05 '14 at 23:01
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    I cannot recommend eating the same food for such a long time, neither from personal experience nor from what I know about nutrition - especially not rice. It might have worked for Adam, I probably won´t for most. – Paul Paulsen Apr 04 '15 at 17:00
  • @PaulPaulsen Sure, you should diversify your food consumption, but rice is a good basic ingredient. – Adam Matan Apr 05 '15 at 05:24
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    Rice is suboptimal as it requires a comparatively long cooking time, thus more fuel needs to be carried. Couscous for example doesn't have to be boiled, just soak it in hot water and wait for some minutes (with stove off). – fgysin Aug 11 '15 at 10:06
  • @fgysin True, but a few comments:
    1. We were cooking soup every day to rehydrate and keep ourselves warm, so we did carry a lot (1 liter per person if my memory serves me well) of fuel anyway.
    2. You could not get any Couscous back in 2004 in Bolivia, and
    3. In some areas cooking is done using local wood, without a stove.
     – Adam Matan Aug 11 '15 at 12:54
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    Beans and rice! You can soak the beans if you want, but it takes a while. After exerting yourself I don't think you'll even notice the waxy bean consistency as you'll likely plow throw anything that has calories. – tsturzl Aug 11 '15 at 22:53
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    Couscous is certainly 'optimal' - I've seen someone do 3+ weeks on couscous with flavour packs. He was covering big daily distances but he commented to me that he never wanted to see couscous again after the walk :-) – timbo May 29 '16 at 00:57
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I can offer my favorite hiking food routine, but I usually just had it for 4-5 days max, between resupplies.

  • Quaker Oatmeal for breakfast (usually two packets with the powdered milk, add cold water to each packet).
  • 3-4 snacks during the day (2 Snickers, 2 M&Ms, sometimes other variants like Cliff bars or Oatmeal snacks).
  • A big tortilla with yellow cheese and pepperoni slices for lunch.
  • 1 Lipton meal (Made by Knorr) of pasta with sauce, or rice, powdered mashed potatoes in the mix, and tuna in bags (more efficient than cans in terms of weight) for dinner, also in a tortilla.

That mix kept me going for a long while, but as I said, I never carried more than 5 days of food on me.

Fenophter
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Noam Gal
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  • I would also recommend something along these lines. Plenty of carbs during the day to keep you going, higher fat content meals at night to keep you sustained while you sleep. Don't forget the protein to keep your muscles fed. – Timothy Strimple Jan 24 '12 at 21:11
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    cold water in your oatmeal? Take 10 minutes and heat up water for coffee and hot oatmeal. Your day will be nicer for it. – Kate Gregory Sep 06 '14 at 18:05
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    I just completed a long hike, eating two oatmeal packets every morning. Cold. I admit that on two extra cold mornings I had it with hot water, and it was nice. But I wouldn't want to carry the extra fuel to be able to boil more water every day. I guess it's a matter of taste. But I still vote for cold oatmeal, personally. – Noam Gal Sep 28 '14 at 15:12
  • cold water, oatmeal and powder milk, make sure to try it before you start hiking, you may not enjoy it... – njzk2 Apr 08 '16 at 20:05
  • most cheeses won't keep that long in the heat, either – njzk2 Oct 03 '21 at 19:48
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Historically, many coureurs de bois survived on pemmican, a mixture of rendered fat, dried meat, and dried fruits rich in vitamin C. It's supposedly a nutritionally complete meal, and capable of sustaining you over long periods of strenuous activity. Marrow fat is supposed to be the most nutritious and least likely to spoil, but any thoroughly rendered fat will do for a short trip. You can find many different recipes online.

Kevin Krumwiede
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  • The taste was not great. The fat tended to go rancid. – Sherwood Botsford Apr 06 '16 at 00:28
  • This is a great, practical follow-up answer in response to @Ben Crowell's very literal answer. – cr0 Apr 06 '16 at 19:30
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    Adding to this and other answers from personal experience: you'll want to have plenty of water if you go with dry, highly nutritious foods, or you will have a tummy ache to say the least. – cr0 Apr 06 '16 at 19:32
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Ben's answer above is good. I wish I could give him more than just one upclick.

Rules of thumb: Carbs and proteins run 3.5 to 4 calories per gram. Fats run aobut 9 calories per gram.

Working hard, especially in cold weather, you can tolerate a lot of fat in your diet.

When planning food for teenagers, I figured on 4000 calories per day. This is sufficient for days with 8-9 working hours per day. (Pretty hard core compared to most recreational use.)

With a 40% fat content diet, each hundred grams of food with provide 40 * 9 + 60 * 4 = 360 + 240 = 600 calories. So it would take 700 grams of food per day -- about a pound and a half. Our meals tended to be lower fat than that, and a rough rule of thumb was 2 lbs dry weight per person per day. This allowed for things like cheese and peanut butter which have moderate water content, but also have fats.

Two pounds per day means that the groceries for a 15 day trip are 30 lbs. With the high fat option (LOTS of nuts, lots of cooking oil) There really isn't getting around that.

So, as others have pointed out, you need to make the rest of your gear light, and minimize the parasitic weight (packageing) of your food.

If you do trips frequently, set up your food in a spread sheet. I had one in which I figured on the weight/volume per serving, had a constant for the number of people in the trip, another constant for the class of trip, and the spread sheet would figure out the packing weight/volume for everything. This makes things a BUNCH easier when packing for an expedition of 30 people for 3 weeks in the wild waters of northern Saskatchewan.

One aside: An external frame pack is considerably easier when handling lots of weight. They tend to be wider and flatter, so keep the load closer to your own centre of mass. They are however a true PITA in brushy country, as the extra width and exposed corners catch.

In response to a request, here is the link to my planning spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zruHUUSo3DKYsPLbBe6PKTI35PIXRgKIrsEZsjJ7TU4/edit?usp=sharing

GREEN cells are filled in by formula.

The sheet has 4 tabs:

  • Route
  • Gear (I can provide, is stuff I have extra of that I was able to rustle up for my nephew)
  • Menu
  • Ingredients.

You MUST be consistent in the names used on the Menu and Ingrediants tabs, or the VLOOKUPs don't work.

If you want to change the quanties, use the Ingrediants tab and change the serving size.

You can copy and modify.

Scenario: My nephew was flying out from the east to do a trip with me. He was 19, fit and about 140 pounds. I am on the wrong size of 65, not as fit, and was 175 pounds. Our packs were 40 pounds each.

Willmore wilderness is variable in terrain and climate. Snow can happen any month of the year. Trails are mostly horse trails. No bridges. Lots of stream crossings below timberline, and bogs in passes. You just live with wet feet. Our route was about 1/3 half century old logging roads, a third horse trail, and a third bushwhacking, and time above tree line. We covered about 120 km in 6 days.

We divided our lunch into two lunches, typically about 3 hours apart. We got onthe trail around 8, would have first lunch at 10:30 to 11, and second lunch around 2:00. We would camp between 6 and 7. This year there were heavy fires in B.C. and the sunlight ranged from yellow to orange. At times views were lost in the smoke under a mile away.

I mention this to give context to the gear list on the linked spreadsheet, and so that you can adjust quantities for your activity level.

Edit: Another Willmore trip using the same list. We had about 15% too much food. This puzzled me, so I did some more research.

First week you tend to undereat, eating about what you eat at home. This will result in weight loss. This also means that you can plan on 1.6 lbs/person/day and get away with it. However, do not be surprised if your appetite ramps up as time goes on.

Sherwood Botsford
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I made a 272-mile hike through the Sawtooth Mountains and this was my diet (which worked well for me):

2-3 oatmeal packets in the morning
trail mix as a snack
top ramen with powdered chili for lunch
then rice or mashed potatoes with a few seasonings mixed in for flavor such as garlic, herb, butter, cinnamon etc...

Rice, mashed potatoes, dehydrated milk, and oatmeal are the lightest foods you can bring.
Brown rice is healthier than white as well.
I had to carry all my food in because there was no re-supply but I used a filter water straw for all my water needs (worked great).

Cliff bars and Snickers or M&Ms both make a great snack but are weight if you are worried about it.

nhinkle
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Camden
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Good Ol' Reliable Peanuts (GORP), or Trail mix:

Trail mix is a combination of dried fruit, grains, nuts, and sometimes chocolate, developed as a snack food to be taken along on outdoor hikes.

Shawn
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  • I combine peanuts and raisins with chili powder, and that full-fills most of my snack needs when hiking. – Samuel DR Mar 29 '13 at 08:36
  • -1 totally un-creative answer. Plus 15 days of GORP? C'mon man . . . – Unknown Coder Sep 08 '14 at 15:45
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    @JimBeam Oh please. I'm not suggesting 15 days of it. Plus, creativity is not the target here. A correct answer is worth more than a creative one. If you want to critique my answer, say that is it incomplete, that it should mention more than one option. Or say that it doesn't answer the original question. I agree that his is not the best answer, but I think your comment is much worse than my answer is. – Shawn Sep 08 '14 at 21:48
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    Peanuts is a quite good answer for “most efficient”. – gerrit May 24 '16 at 16:16
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Dates are the best. Delicious, healthy and durable. When combined with milk I can easily keep going for a week with nothing else. No wonder this combination is the desert nomads's favourite.

joran
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  • I agree. Dates are extremely an calorie dense, natural food, that is usually super tasty while on the trail. As a side note, try to vary your diet. If all you eat is dried fruit, you will eventually get the runs. – john_science Mar 27 '13 at 20:37
  • Dates seem to come in at about 2.75cal/gram. Other options easily reach 4cal/gram. Unless there are super dry dates available? – tjjjohnson Jun 07 '16 at 02:39
  • You do NOT want super dry dates. They become date flavoured rocks. – Sherwood Botsford Oct 03 '21 at 15:32
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For me, it's all about dehydration.

Ok, 12-15 days without resupply? I highly suggest you research the surroundings of this place you are going to trek. Like knowing your water supplies are at (springs, creeks, etc) so you are not packing heavy. Finding out, if you can have camp fires because don't waste your fuel but use it on a raining day. Understand the weather, this will tell ya how much gear you really need. Also pack as light as you can! You need to reduce your pack wight to counteract the food weight!

You can do A LOT of dehydration on your OWN! There is web sites out there that gives you step-by-step on how to do this, and cut wight out too. I have the Nesco Food Dehydrator FD-75A which has worked really well over the years. I also bought a book from Backpackingchef.com that went into detail about stoves, cooking, packing my meals, planning, inventory, etc... The best part, it has a lot of GOOD recipes!

Another site to check out is thebackcountrychef . com (different from above URL) which has some info about calories of energy per day, meals, etc. I would highly suggest watching videos on Youtube by OnlyTheLightest to help reduce wight in your pack. Also Harmony House Foods site has a lot of already dehydrated foods. Good site for buying supplies for those last minute trips.

Also there is NO RIGHT WAY for backpacking, years living by the Appalachian trail.

LMZ
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  • Interesting. Didn't occur to me to even consider hiking where I don't have daily access to water. In my usual haunts (Willmore Wilderness, Rocky Clearwater Recreation Area) we usually are crossing a stream every hour or so. On Coral creek, going up toward Job Pass, we cross the creek 22 times in the space of 3 miles. I've always been able to get away with just using an old 1 liter pop bottle. – Sherwood Botsford Jan 06 '16 at 14:53
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    Addition 3 yrs later: Summer of 2018 I did a trip and ran out of water above timberline. In addition to our water bottles, we had a 2 liter bottle. Gone by about 2 p.m. Now I carry a 2 liter bottle per person, and the dog has a liter in his pack. If we aren't going above timberline, we carry them empty. – Sherwood Botsford Jul 01 '19 at 21:22
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I go with a couple of Mountain House dehydrated meals per day, and check the calories per ounce of snacks and other food that I buy. Everybody does this differently. I have carried a watermelon before. I found this to be somewhat inefficient.

xpda
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Fat, fat and fat.

If you are hardcore, you can get products like: Naturlig energi til heste This one is a Danish product though, but it is 99,5% pure vegetabe fat in powder, odor-/tasteless. Pretty cool to add to your food, you get the highest density of calories possible and it just melts in your mount, without a taste.

Ken Graham
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Henrik
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Recently, nutritional drinks that fulfil the complete nutritional requirements of adults (optimum proportion of carbohydrates, proteins, fats and other nutritients) have been on the rise. Backpackers are probably not the target audience, but their needs should be served pretty well by these shakes.

Brands that I've personally tasted are Jimmy Joy (formerly Joylent) or Huel, YFood and Saturo.

I drink them from time to time, especially if I need some quick energy after work before going to the gym but don't have the time to cook. It's not a culinary explosion, but I think it wouldn't be a big problem to live off it for two weeks, especially if you add dried fruit for some variety. They also come pre-mixed with water, but that's of course way heavier and also more expensive.

It's about 2100 kcal per bag of 600 grams, so for 10 days, assuming you need more than these 2100 kcal due to the permanent exercise, you'd end up with around 10kg. That's quite a load, but significantly less weight would only be possible with a far more fat-centered diet. Apart from the powder itself, you only need water and a plastic shaker. No fire necessary. As long as you have access to fresh water, using the same shaker all the time shouldn't be a problem (if you clean it properly).

Realistically, I wouldn't live off that stuff alone, but for my next longer trip I'm planning to cover about half of the food needs with such meals.

helm
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6

The most efficient "food" you can carry is the body fat you can afford to lose. In addition to getting fit for a two week backpacking trip, gaining a few extra pounds will help. How much you should gain, and if and when you should start to gain, and how much you can afford to lose beyond your normal body weight will vary from person to person.

In our younger days, we each of us always ended our trips of 2 to 2.5 weeks between 5 and 10 pounds lighter than when we started. Neither of us had excess weight to begin with, nor did we fatten-up before the trips, which was a mistake, but not a serious one.

Relying on body fat for some of your calories means that you have less to carry, obviously, but also gives you more freedom on what you do carry. We had a much more varied diet than suggested in the other answers. We took treats, too, including things like frozen orange juice (one 6 oz can of frozen juice every other day), one 1/2 bottle of champagne, a small jar of olives, a tin of sardines, and a few other items to enjoy, not merely to give sustenance. Chocolate, of course, does double duty. As does peanut butter.

The luxuries were far, far more important to the enjoyment of the trip than the burden of their modest extra weight.

Some may argue that the items we carried for variety and enjoyment were not "efficient" foods, but I disagree. Being bored with one's food, or finding it disagreeable is not efficient in the broader sense of enjoying a trip. Unhappiness is not efficient. Boredom is not efficient.

Note that the OP specified a "12 to 15 day trip." My answer would have been different for a longer trip. 18 days was our limit for the food budget I described. For a longer trip, the champagne would definitely be omitted and be replaced by e.g., more peanut butter. We would take less orange juice, maybe only a can a week - or none. We would definitely have gained a few pounds in preparation.

Losing 10 pounds for me meant dropping 7.7 percent of my body weight, a lesser percentage for my husband. This was easily replaced, and not a health problem for us, although everyone is different.

Finally, we were travelling in country that had an abundance of pure water, although later we did take a reverse-osmosis water purifier.

ab2
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I like to eat Knorr Spaghetteria. I don't know if it's the most efficient energy-wise, but it's vastly more efficient than outdoor store dehydrated meals price-wise!

At Amazon they sell at €1.45 per package. A package is advertised to be a meal for two, but it isn't — it is a meal for one. But €1.45 per meal is not bad at all.

I used to bring peanut butter, but I don't bother any more. I just bring peanuts. Lots and lots of them. Easier to carry, easier to eat.

Apart from that, I eat hardkeks, dried fruits (mango, papaya, strawberry, and pineapple), chocolate, oatmeal with raisins ad sugar.

gerrit
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I have only hiked Hawaii on long multi day trips but I can add:

  1. GORP granola, oreos, raisins, peanuts. Can substitute m+m's for the oreos
  2. dehydrated meals by Mountain House, or BP Pantry etc. bring spices to taste.
  3. any dried fruits to choice.
  4. energy bars.
  5. find local food in the hiking area you can enjoy, fish, harvest, scavenge
  6. have the other people carry more of the weight.
Rory Alsop
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Jo Kealoha
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Some of my staple foods on long hikes:

  • well dried out sausages: high in calories, tasty, can be cooked if you want something warm, has a lot of salt to help refill all that we lost via sweating
  • szalonna/slănină, pork fatback bacon, it is basically fat with a salty edge, same properties as the sausages above
  • jam/marmalade/honey, but in some tight plastic container instead of a heavy glass jar, can enrich oatmeal breakfasts or sandwiches if you decide to carry some bread as well
  • instant cous-cous has saved me many times, you just pour hot water on it, leave it for a few minutes and it is basically done
  • red lentils: not so heavy as green lentils, and they boil soft in literally 5 minues
  • polenta (corn) flour: not so high in calories, but easy to prepare, and a small amount like 100 grams serves a meal for two.
Akabelle
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As a runner, it is very common to eat 'heavy' food the days before doing a marathon for example.

Typically is pasta food but I'm sure rice will do too (it has been mentioned also above).

The benefits of pasta are

  • Cheap
  • Reasonably compact (if you take spaghetti there are less empty spaces, although in principle you can compress any pasta)
  • Lots of calories
Michel Keijzers
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