Lightweight Backpacking Food Guide for 2024

We cannot emphasize the importance of planning your backpacking food in advance. No matter how fit you are, your hike will be a disaster if you don’t have the right amount and type of food with you.

The food you eat has significant effects on your energy levels, overall health, and the enjoyment of your adventure. A well-thought-out menu not only fuels strenuous activities but also boosts morale when on the trail. Enjoying a satisfying meal after an exhausting day’s hike is one simple pleasure that enhances outdoor experiences.

Backpacking is a demanding activity, so you need to plan a menu. There are three main nutrients that are essential for hikers: calories, carbohydrates, and protein.

You burn lots of calories when hiking a trail carrying a heavy rucksack. How many depends on things like your body weight, how heavy your backpack is, how much of the trail is uphill or downhill, how many hours you spend walking, and what kind of terrain you are covering.

You can find calculators online to make a more accurate estimate. However, the general consensus is that backpackers typically use 3,000 to 6,000 calories. That’s a lot of energy backpackers burn through! By its nature, backpacking trips involve more than one day of hiking.

Therefore, it is important to look at the calorie content of the foods you plan to eat and ensure that you replace the calories you have used to have enough energy to enjoy the next day. However, this doesn’t mean you should just eat high-calorie sweets.

Your body will quickly burn through the calories from refined sugars, and your energy levels will dip. You need to get your calories from complex carbohydrates to get sustained energy.

Carbohydrates fuel your body in two ways. You can get immediate energy from your food, and any excess gets stored in your liver as glycogen. When you are backpacking, ideally, at least half of your energy should come from glycogen.

Research has discovered that most people can store approximately 400 to 500 grams of glycogen, split between the liver and muscles. After about 3-4 hours of hiking, if you don’t eat anything, you will have used up all the readily available energy sources, and your body will have to work harder to get energy from your fat stores and muscles.

You need to eat enough carbs to give your body immediate energy, but you also need extra carbohydrates to rebuild your glycogen levels. For a moderately challenging hike, a backpacker would need between 60 grams (240 calories) and 90 grams (360 calories) of carbs per hour.

About 10 to 20 percent of your daily calorie intake should come from protein so your body doesn’t break down muscle tissue. Backpacking inevitably puts strain on muscles, and they need protein to repair the damage.

On average, backpackers should aim for 1.2 to 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight daily, depending on the difficulty and duration of the trek. This range allows for the increased muscle repair and recovery needs from strenuous activity.

For an average 70 kg (154 lbs) man, this works out as 84 to 154 grams of protein per day backpacking. An average 60 kg (132 lbs) woman would need 72 to 132 grams of protein during a day backpacking.