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Food Planner

Suggestions on planning your food rations for an extended trip

The secret to great trail food is light, nutritional food that is easy to prepare. Avoid canned foods as they generally weigh you down but are always a welcome treat especially on shorter trails. We would suggest splitting your food up into daily ration packs as it helps you budget your food over longer trails as well as through the day. Eating well and often is the secret to avoiding fatigue. 

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Breakfast Meals:

Generally advise high calorie, easy to prepare meals. Makes breaking camp quicker and easier. 

  • Easy just add water! - dry cereal mix, pre packaged into daily ration portions including powedered milk, suger etc to your taste. Can be eaten straight out the bag.

  • Futurelife (add water to 100g to make a porridge) or substitute with 100g Pronutro mix with powdered milk and sugar.

  • Not so easy: Oats so easy! add sachets with hot water, so long as you want to boil water and clean.


Lunch Meals:

  • 1 x wrap/ lunch

  • 1 x tuna or chicken sachet/ lunch

  • Provita biscuits (1 x packet over the 10 days 4/6 biscuits a lunch) NB pack in a Tupperware to prevent them becoming crumbs

  • 2/3 x cheese wedges (long life)

  • 1 x Isotonic drinking sachet -  example Game (sachet makes 500ml)

 
Snacks:

 To be eaten thought-out the day & or with meals:

  • Assorted Nuts 100g/ day max

  • Dried fruit 50g/ day (Cranberries, raisins)

  • 1 or 2 x Energy bars (With berries and chocolate)

  • Biltong and or salami sticks 100g/ day

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Dinner:

  • 1 x freeze dry food packet (see below for more details) – eaten out the packet or alternatively soya/ tuna with smash/pasta or rice

  • Cup -a- snack (Cup a soup with noodles)

  • Cappuccino sachet (with sugar and milk ready made mix)

  • 1 x Isotonic drinking sachet -  example Game (sachet makes 500ml)

 
Packing:
Daily rations can be packed into separate zip lock bags, with your breakfast (eaten out the bag just add water), lunch and dinner rations packed into there own bags. These bags then serve as rubbish bags and seal tight so not to attrack ants or other unwanted gritters! 

Biscuits and crackers should be packed into one small tupperware container to prevent them from being crushed. 

 
Weight and nutritional guidelines:
Approx. Total weight for 10 days is 8,5kg or 850g/day. The bulk items are made up of nuts 1,5kg, freeze dry food 1kg, breakfast 1kg, biltong 1 kg, dried fruit 0,5kg
Approx. Kcal/ day 3000 - can adjust according to body weight

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Basic food guidelines for common items per serving:

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Freeze Dry Food:

There are a variety of freeze dry products out there that offer basically the same product. The result is a delicious meal that can be prepared in the pack in 10 minutes and is an easy option after a hard day's trail. Back Country Cuisine is a brand we use often, it's generally readily available and competitive in price and they offer a variety of choices, but shop around.

Generally a single serving pack is adequate per meal. Each pack has a dry weight of around 90g and makes a meal of around 300g with an average of 400 Kcal, specific meal types vary but generally they all give you the same nutritional value. 

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As an alternative there are many different dried food options that you can get at your general supermarket, and although not as convenient it’s often much cheaper with the same nutritional value.

Examples: Two minute noodles, Smash dried potato (or couscous), ready made pasta meals, soya mince, ‘Cup o soup’ etc. 

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