The Ultimate Guide to Backpacking Meals

Key factors

Cool zippers, new waterproofing, etc... sometimes it's easy to get lost in all the hype (over-spending happens on features). Our guide focuses on the fundamental factors you should always keep in mind (thus, this short list is similar across all items). Then only at the end do we have some questions to get you thinking about other minor features.

• Type or Style
• Price
• Capacity (size)
• Weight & size (for backpacking)

We highly recommend reviewing Type or Style first, where we review what you can use to address the Core function--a regular item you have at home may work! The other factors are secondary & depend strongly on the Type or Style you've picked.

While we encourage you to use regular items wherever possible, as an outdoor gear shop, we only carry outdoor-specific products

Type or Style

This is one of the only gear guides where we don't start by talking about all the ways people can address the topic of food. This is because from bringing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches; nothing but trail mix, energy bars; having a steak; or just having backpacking meals, there are endless ways to prepare food, and food planning is outside the scope of this page.

Instead, we focus on the two main types of backpacking meals.

Price

While the table above shows the general price difference between dehydrated vs. freeze-dried food, price is more determined by brand, capacity (see below), and by the food itself, such as:

• All organic tends to be more expensive
• Vegetarian tends to be less expensive

All backpacking meals tend to be ~$10 for a meal.

Capacity (size)

In this case, we refer to the serving size of the backpacking meal (if you're buying individual packets). Generally for most backpacking meals, a single serving is 300-500 calories. Meals can be pre-packaged into 1, 1.5, or 2 servings. Depending on your food planning, think about how many servings will be enough. If you've never had backpacking meals before, we encourage you to test them at home or trial them on shorter trips before a longer trip.

As you can imagine, as capacity increases, so does price and weight & size.

Weight & Size (Compactness) for Backpacking

If you're thru-hiking 20+ miles (32+km) per day, every advantage counts! In this case, size refers to compactness. You can carry more gear in the same size backpack if all of it is very compact, or for more weight savings, you can get a smaller size pack.

Food strategy is out of scope for this post (probably there are people optimizing for which foods are the lightest when dehydrated or freeze-dried!). Generally, the strategy we observe most frequently is buying in bulk. The biggest advantage isn't weight savings*, but size savings in cutting out individual packaging. Bulk food in a single plastic container is more compactable than several individually packaged meals.

*In fact, weight may be increased, since if you bring bulk food, you may need to bring cookware, whereas with many backpacking meals as we described above, you can cook directly in the package

Minor features that may be important

Here, we give you a list of questions to start thinking about minor features. We hope our approach of savings these features for last gets you to more critically think about what you need & not get caught up in the hype of what's cool and over-spend your budget.

• Can you cook directly in the package? This is a great way to optimize weight, since you no longer need to bring cookware. Cook-safe packaging should not leach compounds into your food even when boiling water is poured inside
• How do you dispose of the package? Everyone knows to pack out their individual waste. Sometimes food packaging, though, can be burned, which can save you some hassle. Be absolute sure that this is safe with your specific packaging; you do not want to expose yourself to toxic fumes!

General Notes

• We choose what we carry based on extensive research on what's the best value to our customers (e.g., price given performance & durability features) across all the top brands. We specifically do not carry every brand & model; for details on why we do/don't carry certain items in the How To Choose section
• Buy prices are MSRP with tax, i.e., what you see is what you pay. Prices may differ in-store due to change in models or discounts, but this is rare. If we don't sell what we rent, we list MSRP value with tax
• Rent prices are the starting prices; enter trip dates on our Catalog to get exact prices (based on total trip length, not per day!). We also don't charge sales tax, an automatic savings of almost 10%!

	Dehydrated type
Model
	Good ToGo meals, various flavors Vegan, Vegetarian, Gluten Free options available
Buy MSRP with tax	$13

When you rent online, we will pick a model for you. You can change the model if you pick-up in-store, subject to availability. On the Options page of our online order process, you can also select options or write-in any preferences. This section describes the majority of our models & options, but sometimes we carry others. We will only pick something else if it doesn't conflict with your choices indicated on the Options page; moreover, if there's a major functional difference (e.g., capacity), we will attempt to contact you first