Thread: Bush tucker - what do you carry in?

Footlong subway.

Originally Posted by Pommy

Footlong subway.

might as well take in a bag of sugar !

This is my food journey…
I started down the food rationalisation and lightweight gear rabbit hole a while back, from which I have learnt a lot.
But firstly, a bit of background. I primarily head into the hills for five days at a time, and where I generally hunt entails a gruelling steep 6-hour walk in, of which the first 1.5-2 hours is particularly brutal, and then once up top, typically requires a good 3-4 hours per day walking to get to the right areas depending on the weather.
Note that I'm not paleo, keto or follow any particular diet and that I don't have a sweet tooth, and lean toward the savoury spectrum. I'm a middle-aged man weighing in at 85kg who enjoys his food and trying to find solutions to problems.
Long story short, I wanted to know what my daily energy requirements were, so I could better tailor my food carriage and therefore reduce pack weight. So I approached my colleague, who is a subject matter expert on nutrition and human performance, hoping she had had some trusted information relating to activity, age etc., and the required XXXXkCal per day, and provide a quick answer to my question. But what I opened was a can of worms that I knew existed and was trying to avoid. Anyway, after our discussion around what I actually needed per day, energy-wise is a very open-ended question and specific to each individual. However, the two main points I came away with were: try and reduce the amount of food needed by training my body to operate on less, and secondly, up the energy-dense foods carried, something which I was doing, but with a couple of alternatives thrown in the mix. So, after talking to her, I began teaching my body to operate on less fuel to reduce the amount of food I needed to carry, in conjunction with increasing the energy density of the food I was carrying.
One of my goals was to cut 1 of my meals from my day, which over 5 days is nearly a reduction of 2 days food weight, essentially going from taking 15 meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) down to 10 meals.
I am a great believer in trying things out well in advance of heading for the hills, particularly if it can impact your health, safety or enjoyment/comfort.
Now I never used to eat breakfast, so firstly, I tried dropping breakfast from my daily routine. My weekdays start at 5 am until usually around 10 – 11 pm, but I also get in 45 – 1 hour of exercise each day. Weekends are similar but usually get up at 7 am. I have an active job, but generally not overly physical. What I found was that after about 5 days, my body got used to missing breakfast, though my cognitive function did initially suffer but bounced back started after ~7-10 days, and I suppose what I was doing here is what people call intermittent fasting. However, what I did find was that when I got up and went out and had a physically demanding morning, I faded fast, really fast, fatiguing mentally and physically. I put this down to my body not being "trained" for this effort, and here lies my point of trying things out before heading out. If I had just assumed that because I was able to drop breakfast during my typical day, I would have put myself in a terrible position on the hills from the get-go.
So, to get around this, I reinstated breakfast, though I did push it out, though I have never liked eating as soon as I get up, I'm not much of a morning person. What works for me is a coffee or two, then breakfast when I can, usually between 7.30-9 am, depending on how hangry I'm getting. The breakfast I eat each day is the same I take in my pack, again, so my body is used to what I'm putting in it, and I know how it affects me. Now breakfast consists of quick oats, milk powder (if away from milk), nuts, dried fruit and dark chocolate, so all I need to add is hot or cold water if using milk powder, and bam breakfast. One thing I would say, though, is to be aware of how big you make your breakfast, as the weight can ramp up quickly, trial quantities to find out works for you in both taste and fuel. All up breakfast is my heaviest meal coming in at around 200g each. But with more tweaking and experimenting, I'm looking at bringing this down too.
I am tired of the freeze-dried and dehydrated meals offered in NZ, and their price point is horrendous. The Radix meals nutrition-wise are ok, but their meal options have plummeted in my opinion, Back Country nutrition-wise are rubbish, and I find the Go Native portions too small and heavy. To this end, I have borrowed a dehydrator off a friend and begun experimenting and making my own dehydrated meals, which I must say have been fantastic, reducing my dinner weight down to around 75-100g for a decent sized main meal, but this is just the "meaty" portion, i.e. dehydrated, curry, savoury mince, chilli-con-carne etc. not including a carb portion. For dinner carbs I have begun eating potato flakes, very quick to prep (just add hot water), filling and weigh next to nothing. Another one is couscous, which I tend to bulk out with added dried nuts and fruit, again add hot water, done. You can also dehydrate rice and just add water before eating, but I find this too much effort and a waste of time and energy to dehydrate at home and boiling rice is in the bush, a waste of fuel in my opinion. I have looked at the Uncle Ben pre-cooked rice packs, but they are too heavy for my liking, coming in at 250g each. Depending on the time of year, I also carry either a small amount of olive oil or butter to add to meals. Both are excellent energy-dense foods that your body readily converts to fuel and keeps you feeling fuller for longer without causing a blood sugar crash.
Now for snacks. For all meals, I have been trying to cut down the amount of complex carbs, i.e. wheat etc., and simple carbs, i.e. sugars, from my diet, and replace them with fats in natural forms, i.e. oils, butter and meat fats. So to this end, my snacks consist of dried nuts, high cocoa dark chocolate, peanut butter, homemade jerky and biltong, which is cheap and easy to make, and you can control the flavour and ingredients. I portion jerky and biltong out at 50g per day.
The next cab off the rank to try out as a snack food is pemmican containing dried fruit and nuts, an experiment I'm planning to get underway in the next week or two. For those of you who don't know what pemmican is, it's an energy-dense old fashioned survival food, based on beef dripping and dried meat, to which you can add stuff such as dried fruits and nuts from all accounts to make it more palatable.
Anyway, after all of this, I have got my entire daily meals down to around 500-600g per day (including tea, coffee, cuppa soups etc.), which I'm pretty pleased with. These meals give me all the energy I need, satisfy my hunger, taste better than those currently on the market and are far kinder on my wallet.
If you are interested, I will also add my 10c to the “Ultralight Hunting Gear List” discussion thread in the next day or so too.