Food for any backpacking trip is all about balance: a balance of meals that are lightweight yet still offer a sufficient amount of calories and nutrition, food that will likely not be of the fresh variety but will still bring flavor to the table, and finding that delicate balance between bringing enough food without bringing too much. Once you get the balances right however, planning out food for a multiday backpacking trip can be a simple process while still keeping us well fed and in good spirits out on the trail.

Utilizing a hanging scale to pack your food can help ensure that no matter the length of your backpacking trip, you're taking the right amount of food.

How to Determine How Much Food to Bring

One of the most popular ways to get the food right is using a pounds per person per day (PPPPD) equation. Others prefer to pack by the day, and individual meals may all be assembled and labeled in Ziplocs. Both approaches have their pros and cons, and I like to take from the pros of each approach to both take the right amount of food while still creating a sense of proper meals, and all with sufficient variety, while very importantly keeping the packing process quick and easy.

Simply throwing a random array of food together to blindly meet a PPPPD weight goal could leave you with some less than interesting meals – Clif Bars for dinner the last night, perhaps. This is by no means a guide of exactly what food to bring, as such a list is simply impossible; each of us have different dietary approaches and palates vary. This is however, a guide on how to approach the task of packing food in a quick, easy, and systematic way to get you out on the trail faster while still taking the right amount of food. Food for a trip can be summed up in a few easy and obvious categories.

Breakfast, lunch, dinner, incidentals, and snacks to get us through the miles to whatever the next meal may be. Going day by day is one way to guarantee you’ll have a good selection of food, but I find this approach takes too long and is too tedious and it requires a lot of organization and starting over. Thus I always pack not day by day but for the trip as a whole unless it’s a quick overnight.

When packing food for a backpacking trip, it helps to separate things by category to get started.

Assembling Food by Category

Dinners & Incidentals

I always start by assembling dinners – 1 for each night obviously along with the related incidentals like olive oil for boosting calories, spices, etc. – if you’re a freeze-dried meal aficionado and have some stock on hand this is quick, but if you’re more of a trail chef you’ll need to invest more time here. Like dessert? Now’s a great time to throw in your easy to pack sweet tooth option to go with dinner. To add to that incidentals category, I usually throw in some drink mixes, coffee (Starbucks Via), and a selection of dehydrated veggies to add to meals as well.

Lunch

Lunch is an area where I like to break out the breads – tortillas, bagels, and pita breads for example, along with whatever you like that goes with them; this will help break up the possible bar monotony that many of us will need to contend with in the backcountry. Keep in mind that lunch may not be needed if you’re headed to the nearest burger joint after your trip ends, and / or you’re picking lunch up on the way to the trailhead before starting your trip. Lunches are easily assembled, and no need to pack it all separately by day, the best part of the as a whole approach is that you can mix and match from the food bag depending on what you feel like eating when the time comes on the trail, while still knowing that you have other appropriate foods to take the needed places later.

Breakfast & Snacks

Breakfasts are as personal as meal time on the trail gets, but I like to keep breakfast intentionally a bit boring and after a quick cup of coffee, I always reach for a calorie and protein dense bar of some type to get me on the trail sooner rather than later. However, whether it’s bars or oatmeal, packing breakfasts can be handled in one fell swoop just like dinners. For snacks I’ve found that 3 200+ calorie snacks a day to work very well: One between breakfast and lunch, one between lunch and dinner, and one to add in along the way either with lunch or to double down during the day and whenever you might encounter a big climb or miles push. By taking the total day count and multiplying by 3, I simply drop this many snacks in the food pile (a trip starting on Friday morning and ending Monday morning would make for 3 total days and 9 snacks). Make sure you’re selecting from a few different snack varieties to keep it fresh and to prevent bar burnout on the trail.

Weighing Your Food

Finally, take your digital scale and weigh all the food – plastic grocery bags are excellent for this since they have convenient handles for a hanging scale hook like on the Feedback Sports Scale and add such little weight as to not require any scale zeroing or math. Now enters the PPPPD equation: I always plan for around 1.5lbs of food per day (including packaging that is not overly heavy…which you wouldn’t want to carry anyway), and I usually have a bit of food left over and as a small buffer. Your figure will however likely vary, and it’s best to start heavier with the popular 2 PPPPD figure and gradually reduce, if you can, on subsequent trips until you find your sweet spot.

Taking the trip days and multiplying by your personal PPPPD number – keeping in mind the first and last days aren’t full days, you should hopefully come close when weighing the lot of food. Of course, multiply as needed by the number of people you’re packing for. If you’re like me, you’ll come out a bit over. Dinners and breakfasts are usually off limits to weight reduction, but I find I can usually shed some weight in the snack and lunch department where needed to get closer to the target weight. While taking all that food can be appealing at home, it can quickly be regretted on the trail once it’s in a backpack and you’ll probably end up with a lot of leftovers. The pounds per day figure is the best way to take enough, without packing too heavy – just make sure you’re packing calorie dense foods (100 calories or more per ounce, preferably more, is decent) and not fluff.

Determining your own PPPPD value is important when it comes to getting your food bag dialed in.

Packing the Food & Final Thoughts

Once you have the food all assembled and have settled on the final weight tally, there are a few ways to take your food. You could hang your food, take a bear canister, or pack an Ursack bear bag. I prefer to hang as a last resort just to save time in the evenings – in regards to food containers, you can find a full selection here at REI Co-op.

No matter which way you go taking precautions to protect your food from wildlife and wildlife from your food is a must on any given night, and you’ll be able relax and just enjoy the scenery – the best part being that the food bag is always getting a little lighter as you go – without having to worry how you’re going to assemble that next meal and with a food bag that’s not too heavy, not too light, and is just right.

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in Issue 39 of TrailGroove Magazine. You can read the original article here for additional photos and content.