What’s the best food on the trail? Well, it’s not always easy to eat healthy on the trail. Meat spoils, vegetables spoil and fruit spoils. In this article I will explain how you can still eat healthy while hiking. The key is to maintain a varied diet, but how can we do this on the trail? Keep reading to find out.
PS: only interested in the best hiking meals, not the theory behind it? Read this article instead: The best hiking meals you can buy.
Eating healthy while hiking for multiple days without being able to resupply can be challenge. You should bring good trail food, you can either buy this from a store or create it yourself.
It is hard to maintain a healthy varied diet because meat, vegetables and fruit will spoil. The solution to this problem is to subtract all the water from the food by dehydrating it. Additionally, you need at least some kind of awareness when it comes to macronutrients to understand what a varied diet really means. Remember, your body is doing a lot of work, make sure to treat it well.
Maintain a varied diet on the trail
Eating a healthy varied diet means eating a variety of trail food every day so that your body receives the nutrition it needs.
Later in this article, I will go more in detail about what exactly you should eat. However, the main thing to remember is to simply have a varied diet. This might sound simple enough, but it is not that easy to maintain a varied diet when you are out on the trail.
In everyday life, this might not be a big challenge. A meal often consists of meat or fish, vegetables and some kind of carb source like pasta, potatoes or rice. Throughout the day you will enrich your nutrition intake with eating fruits as snacks. Okay, maybe your snacks won’t always be that healthy. But still, at the end of the day, you will have eaten a wide variety of foods and that’s the most important thing.
Once you are on the trail, however, things start to get a lot harder. You can’t simply carry a fridge in your backpack. This means that food like meat, vegetables and fruit will spoil eventually.
If you are able to resupply every couple of days, that’s great. But you won’t be that lucky on every hiking trip. There will be trips where you won’t be able to resupply for a very long time, but you still want to maintain a varied diet. How can we deal with this problem? In this article, I will give you an in-depth answer on that question. However, the best solution is pretty straightforward. Bring dehydrated trail food.
Food dehydration
Food dehydration is one of the oldest methods of food preservation. The North American used to preserve meat by sun-drying slices. Food dehydration is nothing more than extracting the moisture from a certain food. By doing this, the growth of microorganisms will be inhibited.
Dehydration does not only has the preservation benefit. It also shrinks the size and the weight of the food. This obviously comes in handy for backpackers. If you truly cannot resupply for a long time, dehydration becomes even more important.
You can either buy pre-dehydrated trail food or you can buy a food dehydrator and dehydrate food yourself. Buying a food dehydrator might sound pricey at first, but in the long run it will surely save you money. As long as you use it enough of course.
If you have your own food dehydrator you can use it for almost anything. You can dehydrate meat, fish, vegetables and fruit. You could even go crazy and dehydrate entire meals, like spaghetti bolognaise. Yes this has been done, quite often even, feel free to google it.
Having a food dehydrator allows you to prepare all your meals at home. You could even count calories and macronutrients if you want. Once you are done dehydrating your food, you can divide everything in plastic freezer bags. Every bag could contain a separate meal. Now all you have to do when you want to eat on the trail is rehydrate your meal and potentially cook it. It truly is very convenient.
This is a huge deal when it comes to eating healthy. You basically control what you are going to eat before you leave on your trip. You have time to properly prepare every meal and think about their nutritional values.
Dehydrating food without a food dehydrator is technically possible, but it is definitely not recommended. You might dehydrate your food partially, but it is almost impossible to completely dehydrate your food. This could cause problems because if there is still moisture inside your food, your food will not be preserved very well. This could lead to spoilage. Especially if you are hiking in the middle of nowhere you do not want this to happen.
My advice would be to simply buy a food dehydrator. It will be worth it in the long run.
My recommendation would be the Excalibur 3926TB food dehydrator. I also wrote a review about this product Excalibur 3926TB food dehydrator review. This is in my opinion the very best food dehydrator currently on the market.
However, if you just want to experiment a little bit or you are on a tight budget, this might be a little bit too expensive. I get that. So I decided to also look for a good budget friendly food dehydrator. My recommendation would be the Nesco FD-1040 Gardenmaster Food Dehydrator. I also covered this model quickly in the Excalibur review.
Plan your food route
I have talked about food spoilage and how to handle it. However, food spoilage might not even be a concern if you have the option to resupply ever couple of days. This would also result in a lighter backpack because you would have to carry less food.
Before I leave on a long distance trail (2 weeks or more), I always try to find ways to resupply once in a while. If I have to, I might consider altering my route a little bit.
You could consider leaving the trail for a while and hitchhike to the nearest town. Sometimes it simply won’t be possible to resupply, just make sure to think about all the options before you leave on your trip.
Carrying food on the trail for two weeks or more adds a lot of weight to your backpack. You are almost obligated to carry dehydrated food, which is a lot lighter, but it still gets heavy if you pack huge amounts of food.
Everything depends on the situation and the trail, but I highly recommend that you do proper research before you start packing food for multiple weeks.
Macronutrients
This part will be a bit more theoretic. However, I feel like it is necessary if you want to understand what a varied diet is.
Macronutrients are chemical elements that humans consume/need in the largest quantities. Macronutrients can be split up in three main groups: protein, carbohydrates and fat.
Do not confuse macronutrients with micronutrients, which basically means the opposite. Macronutrients are the nutrients we need in large amounts (protein, carbs and fat). Micronutrients are the nutrients we need in small amounts (vitamins, minerals). This does not mean that micronutrients are not important of course.
The terms “macronutrients” and “micronutrients” are often shortened to “macros” and “micros”.
Each type of nutrient performs certain tasks in the body. For most of these tasks they need to interact with other nutrients in order to be successful. This is why that varied diet is so important.
Let’s take a closer look at each macronutrient group.
Btw. If you are planning on fasting while hiking, make sure to take a look at this article: Fasting while hiking – everything you need t know.
Protein
Except for water, your body is largely made up out of protein. Protein is needed to maintain, build and repair muscle tissue.
Protein consists of amino acids. You could consider protein to be the building blocks of your body, and amino acids to be the building blocks of protein.
The main sources of high quality proteins are meat, fish and animal products like eggs, dairy, etc. It might be a bit more difficult to find big amounts of high quality protein on the plate of a vegetarian. However, there are still plenty of alternatives (lentils, beans, cheese, yoghurt, etc.).
If you are having trouble with reaching your daily amount of needed protein, you might consider to supplement your diet with an occasional protein shake.
Whenever you do intensive exercises, you will create micro tears in your muscles. Proteins will be broken down into amino acids and amino acids will repair the damaged muscle tissue. This process will eventually result in stronger and bigger muscles. This is the essence of muscle growth.
Even if you are not interested in muscle growth, you still need your portion of daily protein. If you are out hiking, you will create some micro tears. If those micro tears do not get repaired because of a lack of protein, your body will start to break down the damaged muscle tissue. This means you will not maintain your current muscle mass.
Note that the amount of micro tears made by hiking depends on the weight of your backpack and the difficulty (changes in altitude) of the trail. The amount of micro tears created by lifting weights is a lot bigger.
These micro tears do not fully recover overnight. It will take multiple days. Therefore, it is important to constantly resupply your body with protein.
You can learn more about building muscles in this article: Can you build muscle while hiking?
Carbohydrates
The most simple way to explain carbohydrates would be to compare it to the fuel of a car. Our body uses carbohydrates as its main source of energy.
If you have ever been on a diet or read about any kind of diet. You probably think that carbs are the enemy and that they will make you fat. The truth is that the only thing that makes you fat are calories.
Calories can come from protein, carbohydrates or fat. If you have consumed more calories than you have burned at the end of the day, you will gain weight. This weight could be muscle if you are purposely training for that, but for most people this will equal fat gain. In other words, the carbohydrates are not responsible for making you fat, but the calories that come with them.
If you do not do a lot of exercise, you will not need a lot of fuel. However, if you are hiking entire days, you do need a lot of fuel. So carbohydrates are just as important as protein and fat.
Important to know is that there are two main carbohydrate categories: simple and complex carbs. Simple carbs are more commonly known as sugar. The knowledge that a lot of people eat too much sugar will probably not come as a surprise. However, this does not mean that all kinds of sugar should be avoided.
There is also a big difference in natural sugars (like sugar from an apple) or added sugar (like sugar from candy). Added sugar should always be avoided as much as possible. Natural sugars can be healthy for your body, but there should still be limits.
For example: almost all of the calories of an apple comes from the carbohydrates. And almost all of the carbs in an apple are sugars. Needless to say that an apple is not unhealthy. Eating ten apples a day on the other hand would actually be unhealthy.
Complex carbohydrates can be found in high quantities in oatmeal, brown rice, potatoes, bread, etc.
Simple carbohydrates should mainly come from fruit. Fruit is very easy to bring with you once it is dehydrated (dehydrated fruit can last for multiple years).
Fat
Fat is the most energy dense macronutrient. This is great for hikers, more energy for the same weight. However, don’t go to crazy on the fat either.
Fat is definitely very important for your general health and well-being. However, as always, moderation is the key. A good number to aim for is 25%. What I mean by that is that 25% of your calories should come from fat.
Fats are composed of fatty acids. These building blocks fall into three main categories: Saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat and monounsaturated fat.
Saturated fat are more commonly known as bad fats. You have to be especially careful with this if you have high cholesterol. This type of fat is used by the liver to make cholesterol, which is involved in hormones production (like testosterone). Hormone production is important, and therefore, saturated fat should not be avoided completely. However, it should definitely be limited.
Saturated fat is mainly found in animal products like cheese, veal, whole milk, lamb, beef and even in certain types of oil.
Polyunsaturated fat and monounsaturated fat are commonly referred to as unsaturated fat. This type of fat help with lowering the cholesterol. Polyunsaturated fats lower both good and bad cholesterol while monounsaturated fat lower only bad cholesterol. This is why monounsaturated fat is the healthiest fat out there.
Polyunsaturated fat can be found in fish oils, sunflower oils, corn, soybeans, etc.
Monounsaturated fat can be found in vegetable oils and nut oils.
Most food will contain a mix of all three fatty acid types, but the proportions will be different.
Ratio
Okay so now we know the basics of macronutrients, but how does that help us?
Well, now that we have that knowledge we can start thinking about a healthy ratio.
My personal recommendation would be to aim for a 30/45/25 ratio, this means 30% of your daily intake should come from protein, 45% from carbs and 25% from fat.
This ratio might also be a little bit different for you, depending on your goals, but this is a good starting point.
I’m not trying to tell you that you have to count every calorie or every macronutrient. I’m simply trying to create some awareness. This knowledge could make you realize that you have a very unhealthy diet and it would also make you understand why that is.
As I said before, the most important thing to remember is to have a varied diet. If you have that, your ratio might not be perfect, but it won’t be terrible either. This ratio is an ideal, you obviously do not have to reach these exact numbers. That being said, it would be a good aim.
Note that you should aim for this ratio at the end of the day, not for every separate meal.
I advise you to use this knowledge and revise your current hiking diet (or even your regular diet). For example, if you have oats for breakfast, vegetables and rice for lunch and dehydrated spaghetti bolognaise for dinner. Your carb intake will be way too high and your protein intake will be too low.
Vegetables on the trail
I have talked a lot about macronutrients, time to cover micronutrients. The most important micronutrients are vitamins and minerals.
Try to bring a mix of vegetables and make sure to include some green vegetables as well. Beans and lentils are great for both vitamins and minerals.
Vegetables contain both vitamins and minerals. Most hikers do not get enough vitamins because they do not eat enough vegetables. As I said before, vegetables will spoil. However, just like meat and fruit, you can use the food dehydrator to solve the preservation issue.
An often overlooked fact is that the trail itself provides a lot of vegetables. The wilderness is covered with edible plants. You probably walk by edible plants all the time. Without realizing that they could enrich your next dinner. If you want to learn more about edible plants, read this article How to live off the land while hiking and camping.
That being said, you do not want to rely on edible plants. Use them when you can to enrich your dinner, but don’t assume you will find enough of them. I don’t like to take chances on the trail.
If you decide to buy pre-hydrated vegetables, I would recommend Harmony House Foods Dried Vegetable Sampler.
Fruit on the trail
Pretty much the same story as with vegetables. Fruits are great for both vitamins and minerals. Therefore, they are a great as trail food.
Once again, fresh fruit will spoil after a couple of days. If you will not be able to resupply every couple of days, you probably want to dehydrate that fruit.
In my opinion, nuts are the best fruit to bring on a hiking trip. Especially almonds and cashews are great for both minerals and high quality fats. Also, you do not have to worry about preservation.
If you are lucky you might find some fruit on the trail. Probably mainly in the form of berries. Make sure that you are 100% positive that they are edible before eating anything (same rule applies for any edible plant).
Dehydrated fruits are very popular, also outside the backpacking community. If you don’t want to dehydrate your own fruit, it should not be very hard to buy them in a local store.
You can also buy a mix of dehydrated fruits on amazon: Organic Dried fruit assortment.
What trail food should you bring
I have overwhelmed you with theory and science, but maybe you just wanted to know what food you should bring on your trip. Let’s take a look.
When it comes to carbohydrates, simply throw some oats and some brown rice into your backpack and you are good to go. These sources contain a lot of nutrients and you do not have to worry about spoilage.
An optimal protein source would be something like: lean beef, chicken, turkey, fish or low fat dairy. We should be worried about spoilage. As mentioned before, dehydration is the best way to preserve meat or fish.
If you do not want to buy your own food dehydrator you could buy pre-dehydrated food. Stuff like StarKist Tuna and People’s choice beef jerky are excellent choices.
If you are going to bring bars as a snack, consider bringing protein bars instead of regular energy bars. It is harder to reach your daily amount of protein than it is to reach your daily amount of carbs. This is especially important if you have a bar for breakfast.
I would not recommend any canned food because you will end up with a lot of trash. Whatever you do, do not leave a trace. I beg you, respect this rule.
When it comes to fats, you will probably get some from your dehydrated meat. However, that will not suffice at all. My recommendation would be to bring a lot of nuts. These are amazing for hikers. They contain mainly monounsaturated fats and a lot of minerals. If this is not sufficient, you could also bring some olive oil.
If you want to see more examples of actual food source, you can find a list of recommended hiking snack here: The 5 best hiking snacks. You might also want to check out my article about how a perfect hiking breakfast should look like.
Hiking supplements
Whether or not you need supplements during a hike depends on your hiking diet. Eating healthy on the trail means getting all the resources your body needs. Preferably these sources come from real food, however, this will not always be possible while hiking.
Do not replace real food sources by supplements. The word supplement indicates that they should be supplementary. Don’t think you can get away with not eating vegetables simply because you have some vitamin pills. It doesn’t work that way.
Fish oil
Fish oil is a high quality, unsaturated fat source. Most of your fat should come from natural food sources, mainly nuts. For most of you, the combination of nuts, meat/fish and maybe even olive oil should be enough.
However, you might be allergic or simply don’t like the taste of nuts. If that is the case, it can become pretty challenging to reach your daily amount of needed fats.
Make sure to check the quality before buying any kind of supplement. My recommendation would be Dr. Tobias fish oil.
Protein powder
As I mentioned before, it can be a challenge to get enough protein when you are hiking. Protein powder is perfect to supplement your current diet. This will be especially beneficial in the morning.
Whey protein is a fast protein and in the morning your body will be craving for protein to recover all the damaged muscle tissue. Additionally, it is easy and tasty to mix them with your oats.
I would recommend regular whey protein from optimum nutrition. Note that this amount of protein will last a long time. I also like to supplement my diet with an occasional protein shake (even when I’m not hiking).
Multivitamin
A good multivitamin could help you reach your daily vitamins. Once again, this does not mean you don’t have to eat your fruits and veggies.
My recommendation: wholefood power daily multivitamins.
Conclusion
The answer on the question “how to eat healthy on the trail?” is to maintain a varied diet. You are able to do this by either creating your own dehydrated trail food, or to buy a variety of trail food from a store.
Maintaining a varied diet can be done by resupplying every couple of days or by finding a way to preserve your food. The most convenient way to preserve food is food dehydration.
Some basic knowledge about macronutrients is needed in order to understand what a varied diet is. A varied diet should consist of a healthy mix of protein, carbohydrates, fat, vitamins and minerals.
Most of your calories should come from real food sources. If it is needed, you could supplement your diet with fish oil, protein powder, electrolytes or multivitamins.