Hi,

Has anyone put together a list/chart of calories-per-ounce for various backpacking foods?

- Elizabeth

Calorieking.com

At the bulk food bins at the grocery store, I read the labels, watching the calories per serving and the weight per serving. Take a calculator for the calories per ounce if you don't like the challenge of the math. On your first visit for that, do not go when you are short on time.

Skurka has written that his calorie cutoff on edibles is 130 calories per ounce. 125 per ounce is 2000 per pound, a good way to think of food weight per day on long-, or no-resupply trips. I'm not suggesting to use that weight per day, it is just a handy number for rough estimates, 2000 calories per pound.

>> Calorieking.com

I can't find a chart anywhere. I can search for a bunch of stuff, but that could take a good long while and I'm likely to miss some choices (I don't know what I don't know). Can you post a link to the chart/table/etc?

Thanks!

I'm in the same boat -- I'd love a similar chart. I started one a few weeks ago (meaning I only have ~15 entries) based on the foods I took on a recent overnight trip. I've just added a page to my gearlist spreadsheet that is for food, and I'm tracking calorie density and serving size of various readily available foods, however, I would be THRILLED if I could just pull in an existing spreadsheet of data to save me the time and trouble of looking up and calculating caloric density for the dozens/hundreds of items that might potentially go with me on the trail.

I think Mike Clelland recommends a minimum of 100 cal/oz in his books, and I find that much easier to achieve than Skurka's 130... at 100cal/oz density, you can find a lot of foods off the shelf that meet that criteria, and you can throw in some lower caloric density foods and balance them out with some crazy high-density foods to still hit 100+ cal/oz. With that 130 number, you can't get close without scrutinizing every single piece of food that goes in the pack, and I know there are some foods I just enjoy on the trail that will never meet that threshold.

This is what I carried on the ULBC trek as lunches/snacks. These average out to 133 cal/oz.

Walker's Shortbread - 1.5 oz/day
Trailmix - 2.5 oz/day
Raspberry Licorice - 2.5 oz/day
Fritos Original - 1.5 oz/day
Dark Chocolate - 1.5 oz/day
Justin's Nut Butter - 1.5 oz/day

Breakfasts and dinners were provided and I believe average to 125 cal/oz.

Getting 120-130 cal/oz is not very hard at all. Each of my snack items was off the shelf. I didn't do anything special or make my own.

here's a starter chart . . .

calorie per ounce chart


. . .

Here is my Master spreadsheet for my PCT thruhike. It has many of the normal backpacking foods and nutritional breakout. You can also see the recipes for the dinners including the calories for all the additives.

http://tinyurl.com/45849nb