A waste? - Appalachian Trail

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#21

Whether or not the meals will fill you up or not depends on whether or not you are a heavy eater. I eat more than most people and weigh around two hundred pounds. Here is the catch, my metabolism works faster than most. I am with Lion King, they do ont fill me up. Maybe two of them. I know personally I almost always use two liptons with dried veggies and a tuna or chicken packet for a dinner on trail. If prepared with margerine or olive oil I think this meal is about 1500-1600 calories. You may think that is a lot for one meal, but after 15-20 miles of humping a pack over the Appalachians you will probably be looking for a snickers or some cookies an hour or so after you eat. I think the freeze dried meals are just too overpriced to be effective for an entire long distance hike. Maybe if used like Peaks stated as a supplement to drops they could be good. I just think those dollars could be spent better elsewhere on preperation costs. Is it April 1st yet???

tribes :smokin

tribes

#22

Turtle I have a Foodsaver which is made by Tilia. It vaccum-packs and heat seals clear nylon bags. These bags come in a roll and can be cut to any size and shape you need, so I make little one-ounce packets, pour in the olvie oil, and seal.

This goes into a one gallon zipper baggie along with the freeze-dried meal, vitamin packet, pack of hot chocolate, a tea bag, a wet-nap, one paper towel and 1 1/2 Esbit tablets. Saves a lot of scrounging around in the food bag for things in different baggies. After dinner all the garbage goes into the baggie along with the day’s cigarette butts and candy bar wrappers, gets rolled up tight and zippered. The next meal the same thing happens only I stick the previous meal’s baggie in before rolling up. It’s pretty disgusting opening up the same baggie of garbage after 3 days so this method avoids that. 5 days, 5 baggies, you end up with a one gallon ball of of garbage.

See y’all on Springer April 1st

-swift-

swift

#23

Nalgene makes some small containers that work well for olive oil. Run about $1.75, and they’re hard plastic, so you don’t run the risk breaking the container. ooh, that’d be a mess, wouldn’t it?

Well, after a few months of hiking, nothing’s going to fill you up, whether it’s Mountain House or not. Just supplement it with more food is all.

Oh, you won’t get maggots if you use only one garbage container. And even if you did, maybe if you had some peanut butter…

0101

#24

Check out www.maryjanesfarm.com. Mostly great-tasting breakfasts, snacks, and dinners. All organic, some vegetarian- or vegan-friendly. Most lightweight, even in their “backcountry” sizes. More expensive than Lipton’s, less expensive than Mountain House or Alpenaire. Better for you, too.

Like Mountain House, you simply boil water, pour it in the eco-friendly pouch, stir, roll up the top, and let it sit for a few minutes before eating out of the pouch. No pot to clean.

When your hiker appetite kicks in, you can certainly add dehydrated veggies or chicken/tuna/salmon-in-a-pouch at the same time you add the boiling water and it makes an even better meal.

This company gets it.

Skyline

#25

Feeze dried of dehydrate food in my opion does not have enough fat or calories to keep you going I add 1 cup of tvp or eggnoodles to mine. I will eat 1 a week on my tru hike. for $5.00 you can but 3 rice ronie meals or somthing else like that.

john

#26

On my hike this last summer, I experimented with freeze-dried meals for a week or so. They did not fill me up at all…look at the back of most mountain houses, they’re between 400-700 calories, if I can remember correctly. At the end of a long day you’re going to want A LOT more calories than that!

I also have a feeling that the nutrional content is a bit sketchy with all that processing going on. The week that the week I ate freeze-dried food was one of my most lethargic weeks on the AT, probably due to the combination of sketchy nutrition/low calories.

For $5.00 you could buy a snickers bar/2 pkgs liptons/big foil pack of tuna and get a lot more calories.

Tell it like it is

#27

I’m 6 ft tall / 210 lbs. and hike solo. I find that a Mountain House single serving plus a Raman noodle soup (I add freeze dried vegies and chicken) is enough. On a 2+ week trek I’ll take a couple 2-serving MH packets for when I’m really hungry, but in the Sierra, I don’t want to mess with leftovers / disposal due to the bears.

booger

#28

Hi Anthony,

I did exactly that before my thruhike last year - picked up 100 freeze dried meals, about 10 x 10 varieties. Absolutely wonderful for the first month, thru the cold weather, etc.

I got so bloody sick of the crap by the time I hit New England, I was trading them away for raman! By all means buy some for variety and convenience. But I’d really recommend allowing for a change in tastes during the hike. Before I left, the last thing in the world that I would’ve been expecting to crave was jelly beans. Sure as heck, I couldn’t get enough of 'em from Harper’s Ferry north!

To me, it’s not about the money or nutrition, it’s about allowing yourself to eat your own hike. Don’t trap yourself before you take your first step!

Squish

#29

I could see that you may be saving some weight by taking freeze-dried foods…maybe, but otherwise - why would you want to limit yourself to the same thing all the time?

Mountain House dinners were great to come by every once in a while, but they never really filled me up. There is also a lot of waste/packaging left over when you are finished, which is never a good thing anyway. You’ll likely get bored with the variety that they do have, and end up giving away a lot of Mountain House meals along the way.

I would suggest dehydrating my own meals if I were going to spend that much money on food for the trail. You get a better variety that way, and can get really creative with it. Of course, you need to start NOW if you want to dehydrate.

Now, about the olive oil thing…it scares me to think of little sealed pouches of olive oil floating around in a person’s food bag, especially with the falls you will be taking sometimes. nalgene/coke/juice bottles work very well for oils, fuel, and extra water bottles. There’s a lot less effort involved as well.

bearbait

#30

“eat your own hike” ha ha :lol

Olive oil doesn’t scare me, but the thought of putting hot cooked food with all its aroma in the sleeping bag to warm it up (unless a hypothermic emergency); especially in the western states you may setting yourself up as a bear burrito…just a thought, YMMV

RockyTrail

#31

I’d agree with Tell It Like It Is. On my last section, I ate freeze-dried. They’re only 400-500 calories. Backpackers need 5000 (?) calories a day.

Harry Dolphin

#32

500 cals. per meal, times 10 = 5000 cals per day.
Ten meals times 160 days of hiking = 1,600 meals.
1,600 meals = more than $6,000.
My point, you ask?
It’s that nearly any food you eat on the trail is going to be a supplement to or be a supplement for another food(s). To narrow the discussion to the point of eating only, just, exclusively packaged backpacker meals misses the point. King sized snickers have about 600 calories…it would be silly to eat only those, though I’d be happy to try it for a while… It’s not just about the calorie count. Some calories are empty sugary ones. It’s about fuel for the body. Freeze-dried food is problematic anyway. Dehydrated is better from a nutrition standpoint, no?

Tyger

#33

Anyone have any firm data regarding the benefits of dehydrated over freeze dried foods?

booger

#34

I just did a web search and couldn’t find anything about one method being better than the other. Dehydrating seems to be the least costly method. I’d like to know if one way is more nutritious.

Tyger

#35

The (lack of) nutrition is in the starting ingredients as well as the process. When they freeze-dry foods, they typically don’t go to the produce section and pick the best looking fruits and veggies, or the prime cuts of beef, to start with. Then they add all kinds of trans-fatty acids and “taste enhancers” to it. Just a guess, but I bet you can’t find a Mountain Home without partially hydrogenated soybean oil.

Just like whole grain bread is more healthy than white bread because of the processing. Most of the nutrition in the wheat grain is in the germ, but white bread is mostly starch with barely any germ left in it…it makes a nice texture and is a pretty white color, but it doesn’t have as much nutrition as whole grains.

Same thing with instant oatmeal…they take out the most nutritious parts so it will cook faster to a nice texture, then add sugars and other chemicals to trick your brain into thinking it’s getting what it needs to function.

I’m just guessing because I haven’t researched freeze-dried food specifically (though I eat it sometimes), but I bet they do the same thing…take out important parts because it’s cheaper to produce and makes a better texture when reconstituted. These things aren’t designed for thru-hikers, but for shorter trips where any lack of nutrition really wouldn’t impact the camper.

I’m not against freeze-dried…I think it’s great for simplicity and variety. I just think the nutrition is sketchy and I wouldn’t depend on it for all of my meals.

With dehydrated food, OTOH, you know what you put in. If you’re a freak about organic food, you can choose only organic. If you just want decent meat and veggies, you know (for the most part) what chemicals are and aren’t present. If you make your own jerky, it’s not full of MSG or preservatives. So whether you choose to eat healthy or not, at least you KNOW what you’re eating!

So eat healthy dehydrated dinners, then have pop tarts and two king-sized Snickers every day!

Jeff

Jeff

#36

Dehydrating destroys a lot of the nutrients (from the heat) where freeze drying preserves them.

“taking out important parts because it is easier to produce” is just silly. It’s real food, and probably much better than what you can make at home.

Gravity

Gravity

#37

My quote: “take out important parts because it’s cheaper to produce and makes a better texture when reconstituted”

Your version of my quote: “taking out important parts because it is easier to produce”

Two different meanings - if you’re going to quote, please quote correctly.

Here’s one source…“The process of milling breaks down the grain’s protective bran, and exposes its germ to air-borne microorganisms. These start feedingon the germ, and begin turning it rancid. Toprevent rancidity, the milling machinery removes the germ. And for better texture and color, it also removes the bran. What remains is the endosperm. This lifeless part of the grain is then further processed, refined, bleached and treated to become teh nutritionally desolate version of wheat known as white flour. It hasa long shelf life because microbes cannot subsist on it very well, and neither can we.” Beyond Backpacking p.180

Since processed grains have significantly longer shelf lives, the investment from production to sale ends up being much cheaper because less product spoils and you don’t have to spend so much money in transaction costs, like for refrigerated transport, for example. Therefore, “because it’s cheaper” in the long run is true. And with the bran and germ removed, the endosperm has very little nutritional value, so the cheaper version is also not as good for you as the whole grain version.

So if freeze-dried food is “much better than what you can make at home”, I guess it depends on how you eat at home. Simpler and tastier, perhaps. More nutritional? Again, it depends on how you eat at home.

I don’t claim to be an expert, and I’m not against freeze-dried food. I already said I eat it from time to time. But if you can find a source extolling the health benefits of it, I’d be interested learning something new.

I’d also be interested to see if MH has any meals that don’t contain processed or refined flour. Because if they don’t, their products have indeed taken out the important parts of the grain, in which case you’re making a claim you can’t support. And that’s just silly. :slight_smile:

Jeff

Jeff

#38

Sorry about the misquote. I did do that. I should have copied and pasted.

I was also flipant with the comment “better than you can make at home.” But it is better than most processed foods, including canned or dehydrated. Their processing is simple. Flash freeze it, then put it in a vaccum to get the water out. They have some good info on their site, including :
“Freeze-drying provides very unique benefits and advantages over other food processing methods. Frozen foods maintain fresh flavor, but they must be kept frozen. Dehydrated and canned foods are shelf-stable, but their high-temperature processing reduces their flavor, texture, color, and nutrients. Freeze-drying combines the best of these processing method lock in the freshness, color, texture, and aroma of frozen food while providing the shelf-stable convenience of canned or dehydrated food.”

www.mountainhouse.com

Moutain house doesn’t use much in the way of flour that I know of. Most of the nutrients are in the veggies, and on trail, veggies are super important. The best way to get them is freeze dried unless you can stand carrying them.

Flour isn’t the end all and be all. And eating it isn’t bad for you at all. Just because a food is devoid of nutrition doesn’t mean that it is bad. It just means you need to get your nutrition from else where. There is a problem with too many calories for people at home, but usually that is not true for people out on the trail. Getting proper nutrition is tough on the trail though…

Gravity

Gravity

#39

I agree with most everything in that post, Gravity. I eat LOTS of white flour. I don’t think it’s “bad”, just not necessarily good. When you’re counting ounces, you’ve gotta consider that you’re carrying weight in the food that might not be doing you much good - nutritionwise, anyway. But having an easy, tasty meal can make up for that as long as you don’t depend on it 100% for your nutrition.

I’d bet all of MH’s rice and noodles are made from processed white flour, btw.

They do seem to have a lot of sodium, but with the exercise on the trail that may not be much of an issue. I’d bet they have a lot of MSG, too…maybe no more than anything else you’d get in the grocery store. But if you dehydrate at home you know what’s going into your stuff.

I usually just eat Liptons with Tuna or Chicken and stuff like that. Sometimes I carry fresh veggies cause I get the cravin out there!

Jeff

Jeff