By far one of the most common questions I get about this adventure seems to be: “But what will you eat?”
When hiking the Appalachian Trail, you generally need to eat more than your fair share of food. One of the dubious luxuries of long-distance hiking is that you can’t possibly overindulge. When you need to be eating 6000 calories just to maintain your weight, anything is fair game. Chasing breakfast, lunch, and dinner with three candy bars? Most hikers won’t even look at you twice — it’s par for the course.
But with the need to fill up on so many calories, it’s hard to imagine just how to go about doing so. In today’s modern society, when almost everything is non-perishable and says “Refrigerate after opening” on the package, how exactly do you manage to find enough nutritionally-acceptable food to eat — and, once you’ve accomplished that, how do you carry it all on your back?
Instantly, things like raw meat and milk are out — even if you could carry a refrigerator on your back, there’d be nowhere to plug it in. Out also are canned foods — while you can cook them easily, the water content makes them incredibly heavy.
As a result, hiker staples tend to be lightweight, calorie-dense, and non-perishable — three qualities that are often difficult to find in one food item these days.
Meal plans include heavy amounts of dehydrated foods, peanut butter, trail mix (affectionately known by hikers as GORP — “Good Old Raisins and Peanuts” — though trail mixes have evolved past this limiting moniker), and jerky. With adequate planning, it is indeed possible to not starve on the trail. Giving a complete explanation of all possible ways to plan your food intake would be a book in itself, but here are a few options to give you an idea:
Breakfasts:
Eggs — yes, surprisingly, these can survive about a week without refrigeration, if you can carry them without crushing them
Precooked bacon
Instant oatmeal
Hot chocolate
Snack:
Trail mix
Power bars
Candy
Jerky
Dried fruits
Crackers with preserves
Lunch:
Tortillas – pre-squished, so you don’t have to!
Cured meats — summer sausage, cured salami, pepperoni, jerky, etc.
Hard cheese
Bagels
A package of tuna with mayo and/or relish
Dinner:
There are lots of paths to take here. Some hikers choose to use hiker-specific dehydrated foods, which are easy and tasty. With meals like “Salisbury steak”, “Chicken piccata”, and “Beef Stew”, you do feel like you’re eating at home. Unfortunately, these do tend to be rather expensive — about 5 to 8 dollars per meal.
I’m a poor college student, though, so I can’t afford to be spending that much each night. As a hiker, you’ll learn to make pretty decent one-pot-meals out of the following:
Easy to carry veggies: carrots, onions, garlic, etc.
Spices
Sausage
Grocery-store packaged dehydrated foods. Stuff like
- Knorr Sides
- Packaged mashed potatoes
- Stove top stuffing
- Pastas and rice mixes
It’s definitely possible to eat tasty and (relatively) healthy on the trail without too much work. Make sure you get adequate nutrition, too. Load up on your citrus fruits in town to avoid scurvy (I’m only partially kidding), and hit the salad bar first to make sure you’ve got plenty of greens, since it’s hard to get enough veggies in your trail meals.
