Backpacking Meal Planning by Caloric Density

You are reading a tutorial on how to use caloric density to calculate meal plans and rations for backpacking. If you haven’t already, open up my table of caloric densities by clicking here so you can follow along.

Why take the time to calculate your daily caloric expenditure and intake? There are several reasons, let me enumerate them:

1. To be aware of how much energy you’re expending and how much you’re putting in and, therefore, avoid carrying excess or stretching yourself thin.
2. To better minimize the amount of food weight carried between resupplies. In other words, to become more efficient.
3. To increase your personal awareness of what you’re carrying.

How Many Calories Will I Burn?

In order to do this we’re first going to need to get a rough estimate of how many Calories (see my article on caloric density for the difference between Calories and calories).

There are  a few sources of reference I’ve been able to find and use as a judgment of caloric expenditure on extended backpacking trips.

Andrew Skurka, a long distance backpacker whose judgment I find very sound, plans 5,000+ Calories a day when hiking 30+ miles. I paraphrase his words, but you can find his information on his site and in his book The Ultimate Hiker’s Gear Guide. The book is well worth your time as are many of his articles on his site.

Another reference for calories burned while backpacking is NutriStrategy’s site. I’ve stumbled across their numbers before and, to be honest, I have no idea at all how they came up with the numbers on their list. However, doing a quick computation it seems their numbers are reasonably within the ballpark of what I’d expect. Use them as reference for rough computations.

The final source of reference for caloric expenditure should be your own personal experience. Sites like Whiteblaze.net are full and overflowing with hikers (and forum lurkers who think they’re hikers) more than happy to regurgitate numbers at you from their experience as well. Take it with a grain of salt.

Getting Started

Now let’s get down to it. For the sake of this tutorial we’re going to plan a diet of 4,500 Calories per day while backpacking 25 miles a day over mountainous terrain at low elevation (Appalachian Trail).

You’ve got the list of caloric densities open, don’t you? Good, let’s continue.

We’ll start simple. Let’s figure out how many ounces of Sun Chips we need to eat to provide our daily 4,500 Calories. In order to do this we are going to divide our daily total by the caloric density of Sun Chips (140 Cal/oz).

4,500 Calories /140 Calories per Ounce = 32.14 oz

Algebra tells us that the unit “Calories” in this equation cancels out and the number we’re left with is simply ounces. So we would need to eat 32.14 ounces, almost exactly two pounds, of Sun Chips to meet our intake goal.

You might see the problem with this by now. We can’t eat just one thing and, often, there will be multiple ingredients in each meal. So how do we calculate this increasingly complex number?

Breaking it Down by Meal

We need to know the caloric density of every ingredient we’re using to make our meals and we need to know precisely how much of that ingredient we’re using. Don’t worry it’s simpler than it sounds.

One possible GORP recipe.

Above is a simple GORP recipe with some high caloric density foods. Caloric yield of each ingredient is calculated by multiplying caloric density (cal/oz) by the total ounces of the ingredient in the recipe. Then add up the total weight of all ingredients as well as the total number of Calories in the meal. Finally, divide total Calories by total meal weight for an overall meal caloric density.

Were we to eat nothing but this GORP, we could get 4,500 Calories per day by carrying a meager 27.6 oz of food.

Determining Target Caloric Density

Use the table below to decide what caloric density seems right for you.

Weight (oz) needed per day for each given caloric density.

This table was made to solve for caloric density given a target intake and total daily weight. Ideally I’d like to carry as little food as possible to achieve my 4,500 Calories for the day. So at 32 oz (the chart doesn’t go below two pounds of food per day) I’d need an average meal density of 140-145.

Alternately, let’s say you know your daily caloric requirement is 4,500 and your average meal density is 120. Simply go to the 120 cal/oz row and find the column of daily weight corresponding to 4,500 Calories. In this case it’s somewhere between 36.8 and 38.4 oz. You could, of course, divide 4,500 by 120 to get an exact number (37.5).

Now we know we need to shoot for an average meal density of 140-145 Cal/oz in order to reach our 4,500 Cal/day at a total daily food weight of 2 pounds (32 oz).

Planning Resupplies

Now let’s use all these numbers to help plan my Appalachian Trail thru hike.

Without ever having to travel more than .6 miles from the trail head (only in two locations do I actually have to leave the trail to resupply) my second longest stretch between resupplies is 132 miles (followed closely by 136 miles for the longest). Resupplying as close as possible to the trail allows me to continue moving and avoid expensive trips in to town.

For this section I’ll need 4 full days of food, plus one dinner the night I pick up resupply, and breakfast + lunch the day of my next resupply. Using our 4,500 Calories per day as a baseline at 145 Cal/oz average meal density I need 31 oz of food each full day. Plus the individual breakfast, lunch, and dinner on resupply days which conveniently works out to an extra full day of food.

31 oz per day X 5 full days = 155 oz

For this section I’ll need to plan 9.7 pounds of food (155 oz).

Using Percentages to Plan Backwards

So how do we know exactly how much of each meal to pack?

Let’s go back to our GORP recipe.

One possible GORP recipe.

Let’s say I know my breakfast and dinners together give me 2,000 Calories, and I have a power bar that will supply 400 Calories around lunch time. The rest of the day I’d like to fill in with my mixed GORP recipe. That’s 2,400 Calories of my daily 4,500.

4,500 Cal – 2,400 Cal = 2,100 Cal

I’m left with 2,100 Calories to supplement with my GORP mix. Let’s figure out how much of each ingredient we need to mix up in order to make ends meet on this day. Remember our GORP has a caloric density of 162.98 (we’ll use 163 here for sake of argument).

2,100 Cal / 163 Cal per oz = 12.9 oz

We need 12.9 oz of GORP to make up the difference in our daily meal plan.

For the final step, we need to determine the ratios of our GORP ingredients. We can do this by dividing each ingredient’s individual weight by the combined meal total weight.

Macadamia Nuts: 1 / 7 = 14.3%

Pecans: 1 / 7 = 14.3%

Chocolate Chips: 1 / 7 = 14.3%

Sun Chips: 2 / 7 = 28.6%

Fritos: 2 / 7 = 28.6%

Now we can take the 12.9 oz total we came up with earlier and multiply it by these percentages. Remember 14.3% is (.143) and 28.6% is (.286).

Macadamia Nuts: 12.9 oz X .143 = 1.84 oz

Pecans: 12.9 oz X .143 = 1.84 oz

Chocolate Chips: 12.9 oz X .143 = 1.84 oz

Sun Chips: 12.9 oz X .286 = 3.69 oz

Fritos: 12.9 oz X .286 = 3.69 oz

The obvious, and much simpler solution to this problem, would be to mix up a huge batch of GORP to the ratio you need and then just weigh out 12.9 oz. There will be times, however, when you need to plan backward like this to fill in the gaps.

In Conclusion

I’d like to point out that the math in this article contains a LOT of rounding, while I did round correctly there may still be some finite slippage. For your own calculations remember that .5 and up rounds up, .4 and below rounds down.

Lastly, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read to this point and I sincerely hope this helps you plan whatever trip you’re about to set out on.

List of Caloric Density for Ultralight Backpacking

I present to you my list of caloric density, food items and their corresponding Calories/ounce of mass. This is in Kcal (1,000 calories per Calorie). If I just lost you, it’s okay. The nutritional label on every food item in the USA is written in Kcal or Calories. So if a serving of Sun Chips says 140 Calories per serving, it’s saying 140,000 calories per serving, or 140 Kcal per serving. It’s all the same.

If you’re looking for my tutorial on how to use caloric density to calculate your daily meal plan, just click here.

Keep in mind that these numbers represent a ratio and ounces (oz) as I use it here is a measure of mass in the Imperial measurement system. Olive Oil, for instance, is listed per serving in fluid ounces which is not at all the same as ounces of mass. This could be a potential source of confusion but I have done the conversion for you here.

As I prepare for my 2014 thru hike of the Appalachian Trail, it occurs to me that much of the data and planning I am doing will be useful to others.

I’ve spent time searching places like google, whiteblaze.net, backpackinglight.com and many other various forums and personal pages. The information I’ve found is sometimes useful but very often speculative and contradictory. One commonly sought piece of data is caloric densities of various foods.

This is a measurement I have used in the past but never recorded in a comprehensive list. I am not aiming to create an ongoing list of various foods and their calories per ounce. Some of these foods I picked up at random from the store or cupboard shelf. Some, however, have been staples in my pack for years.

Below you’ll find that I have color coded the list. Green corresponds to foods with a density of greater than (>) 150 Calories per ounce. Gold (true yellow was too hard to read in contrast to white) corresponds to foods with a density greater than (>) 120 Calories per ounce. Orange corresponds to foods with a density greater than (>) 100 Calories per ounce. Red corresponds to foods with a density of less than (<) 100 Calories per ounce.

Food	Calories/oz
Great Value Extra Virgin Olive Oil	236.7	*
Grape Seed Oil	222.2
Macadamia Nuts	203
Pecans	195
Walnuts	173
Jif Chocolate Hazlenut Spread	171.6	*
Salted Almonds	169
Jif Peanut Butter	168.1	*
Fritos	160	*
Dry Roasted Sunflower Seeds	160	*
Andes Crème de Menthe Baking Chips	157.1	*
Nutella	153.8	*
Almond M&M’s	153.8	*
Nestle Nido	150.9	*
Cheetos	150	*
Peanutbutter M&M’s	147.2	*
Nestle Toll House Semi Sweet Morsel (Choc Chip)	142.9	*
Classic M&M’s	142	*
Sun Chips All Varieties	140	*
Tostitos Original Tortilla Chips	140	*
Great Value “Sun Chips” Harvest Cheddar	140	*
Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing	138.1	*
Snickers Bar	134.4	*
Great Value Sweetened Coconut Flakes	132.1	*
ProBar Meal Superfood Slam	127	*
Wheat Thins	126.6
Three Musketeers Bar	126.3	*
Cinnamon Toast Crunch	121.8
Pop Tarts Brown Sugar	119.3	*
Great Value No Bake Cheese Cake Mix	117.6	*
Cheddar Cheese	113
Grated Parmesan Cheese	111.1	*
Great Value Strawberry Toaster Pastry	109.3	*
Knorr Parmesan Pasta Sides	108.5	*
Basic American Foods Vegeterian Refried Beans	107.7	*
Quaker Quick Oats	107	*
Great Value Whole Wheat Rotini	106.1	*
Swiss Cheese	106
Instant Cream of Wheat	103.8
Minute Instant White Rice	103.1	*
Great Value Instant Mashed Potato Flakes	103.1	*
Quinoa	101.9	*
Great Value Angel Hair Pasta	101.5	*
Great Value Nonfat Instant Dry Milk	98.8	*
Meijer Long Grain Instant Brown Rice	98.7	*
Couscous	96
Fantastic World Foods Tabouli Salad	94.3	*
TVP	94.1	*
Honey	91.4	*
Gu Energy Shot	89.3	*
Knorr Pesto Mix	85.2	*
Tortilla Shell Large	81	*
Great Value Light Brown Sugar	74	*
Welch’s Grape Jelly	70.4	*
Great Value Classic Alfredo Pasta Sauce	51.2	*

Everything with an asterisk (*) has been confirmed by hand. In other words I physically picked up the item, read the label, and did the math. Some items I didn’t have on hand and substituted from sources I deem fairly reputable. At least reputable enough to consider marginally accurate and include on the list. I’ll check them later.

Most third party data came from www.nutritiondata.self.com. I really enjoy this site for getting rough estimates of caloric density because you can choose the serving size and it does the math for you. Just select “ounce” as your serving size and it will tell you the number of corresponding Calories. It also has a huge database of foods to search through and will break down the foods by their composition of fats/carbs/proteins as well as amino acid composition.

Fats represent the greatest caloric density among all food types therefore oils and nuts reign supreme on this list. Carbohydrates come in a swift second place in overall calories per ounce followed by protein.

For thru hiking and ultralight backpacking it is ideal to maximize caloric density. The reason for this is simple: the higher the caloric density, the less weight you’ll need to carry to per given caloric intake.

Don’t forget to learn how to calculate your daily meal rations using caloric density with my tutorial here.