On a one-day hike, food is an afterthought: a bar, an apple, a sandwich. On a three- to ten-day trip, it is the single heaviest thing you carry that gets lighter every single day. Pack it poorly and you either go hungry, overload your shoulders, or spend the second half of the trip craving anything that is not another pasta packet. Good food planning is the intersection of three numbers: how many calories you burn, how many calories per gram your food delivers, and how much weight you are willing to carry.

1. Start from your calorie burn, not your appetite

Before choosing a single packet, estimate what you actually burn. A 70 kg hiker moving with a loaded pack on moderate terrain uses roughly 3,000–3,800 kcal over an eight-hour day. Add steep climbs, cold weather or high altitude and the total climbs to 4,000–4,500 kcal. Your basal metabolism already accounts for about 1,400–1,600 of that, so the food you carry needs to close the rest of the gap.

The classic mistake is to plan food around your desk appetite — 2,000 kcal a day, three meals and a snack — and then wonder why you bonk on day three. Plan for 3,000–3,500 kcal per day as a baseline, and bump that to 4,000+ on hard, cold or high-altitude days. Your body will, over the course of a long trip, happily eat that and still lose weight, which is normal. Do not plan on weight loss to save space; plan on eating enough to keep your legs and brain working.

2. Calorie density: the weight budget that matters

Every gram in your pack is a gram you climb a mountain with. The metric that decides how heavy your food bag feels is calories per 100 g. Fresh apples sit near 50 kcal/100 g; chocolate and nuts approach 600 kcal/100 g. That is a twelve-fold difference for the same number of calories. Aim for an average of about 120–150 kcal per 100 g of packed food across your whole menu, water not included.

At 130 kcal/100 g, a 3,500 kcal day weighs about 2.7 kg of food. Over five days that is roughly 13.5 kg, and over ten days nearly 27 kg — before water and stove fuel. This is exactly why resupply points matter: you never want to carry ten days of food on your back at once.

3. A realistic day's menu

Structure the day around three anchor meals plus grazing snacks, because on the trail you eat more like a grazer than a diner. The breakfast should be hot and slow; lunch should be eaten on the move with no cooking; dinner should be the one hot, satisfying meal you look forward to.

• Breakfast (600–700 kcal): instant oats or grits cooked in the pot, plus dried fruit, nuts and a hot drink (tea, coffee or cider). Slow carbs plus fat to start steadily.
• Lunch (700–900 kcal, no cook): tortilla wrap with nut butter or summer sausage, plus cheese, crackers and an energy bar. Eaten piece by piece on the trail rather than as one sitting.
• Dinner (900–1,100 kcal): one dehydrated or just-add-water meal (rice, pasta, curry or soup mix), topped with olive oil or cheese for extra calories, followed by a hot drink.
• Snacks across the day (600–900 kcal): energy chews, chocolate, dried fruit, nuts or candy. Keep them in a hip-belt pocket so you eat on schedule without stopping.

Adding a tablespoon of olive oil or a handful of nuts to every dinner is the cheapest, lightest way to add 120–200 kcal without carrying another packet. Trail chefs call this "calorie padding," and it is how experienced hikers hit 4,000 kcal without eating enormous volumes of food.

4. Resupply math: never carry the whole trip at once

The rule of thumb for any trip longer than five days is to split the food into resupply blocks. Work backward from your total calorie target per day, multiply by the number of days between towns or huts, and pack that block — plus a one-day emergency buffer.

When mailing resupply boxes, pack them in waterproof stuff sacks, label them clearly, and include one "treat" per box — a chocolate bar, a spice packet, a small bag of sweets. The treat is not frivolous; on a long hike, the next treat is a legitimate motivational tool.

5. Appetite loss and flavor fatigue

By day five, the same dinner packet that smelled amazing on day one can make you lose your appetite. This is called "palate fatigue," and it is the reason so many long-distance hikers finish trips under-fed even though they carried enough. Fight it by rotating flavors: do not pack five identical pasta meals. Swap between curry, pesto, teriyaki, mexican and soup. Bring a small bottle of hot sauce, soy sauce or powdered parmesan — it weighs almost nothing and resets a bored palate. Salty, savory and umami flavors taste better on the trail than sweet ones, so lean toward those for dinner.

Also respect what you actually crave. Some people cannot eat first thing in the morning; give them a breakfast bar and save the hot oatmeal for a mid-morning break. Some people cannot face solid food after a long climb; carry an energy drink or chocolate milk powder for those moments. The menu should fit your body, not an idealized blog photo.

6. Packing, bear bags and moisture control

Food is not just heavy — it is smelly, perishable and attractive to animals. Pack all food, trash and anything scented (toothpaste, sunscreen, lip balm) into a single odor-resistant bag, and store it where local regulations require: a bear hang, a bear canister, or a provided bear box. Never cook inside your tent, and never keep food in the tent overnight.

Moisture is the quiet killer of trail food. Cereal goes soft, chocolate turns white and sticky, powder clumps. Keep everything in resealable bags or stiff plastic bottles, not the thin retail wrappers. Store the food bag in the center of your pack, away from the wet outside walls, and line it with a garbage bag as cheap waterproofing. On multi-week trips, repack butter, cheese and cured sausage into airtight containers, and check packets for holes at every resupply stop.