Trekking Diet - Comments Invited
CWLee
forest, with a minimal pack. For food and drink I use my "trekking diet",
described below, and I wonder if any of the professional nutritionists here
would comment on it for me. It has served me well, but I do welcome
constructive criticism.
The diet has 3 elements: (1) I take a cheap, generic, multi-vitamin pill
every day. (2) I eat only roasted and salted cashew nuts. (3) I drink
only Gatorade, which I prepare from powder and water found along the way and
first processed through my small water purification pump.
I'm an adult, white, male and in good health, slender build.
What are the short-term, long-term, and possibly permanent disadvantages of
that diet for, let's say, 10-day, 20-day, and 30-day trips?
Many thanks.
Martin Banschbach Ph.D.
>forest, with a minimal pack. For food and drink I use my "trekking diet",
Water is the most essential nutrient and weight is the limiting factor on a
"trek".
>cheap, generic, multi-vitamin pill
>every day. (2) I eat only roasted and salted cashew nuts. (3) I drink
>only Gatorade, which I prepare from powder and water found along the way and
>first processed through my small water purification pump.
You are carrying both energy and essential nutrients with you in your body. 30
days is considered to be completely safe with only water coming in assuming
that both energy and essential nutrient storage pools in the human body are
adequate.
Cashews are a good source of energy and you have essential vitamins and
minerals in the one-a-day. There are back pack foods that are probably going
to provide more energy than your cashews with a lower weight expense but you
don't really need them and they will probably cost a lot more than cashews.
Gatorade will also provide some energy and electrolytes if you end up sweating
a lot more than normal.
Carry water in is impractical but you already know about potenital problems
with getting water on site. I don't know if sunflower seeds provide more
energy per ounce than cashews do. The only suggestion that I would have is to
look at energy (kcals) per ounce for different food sources. If you are not
taking a lot of body fat into the woods, water and energy are going to be your
biggest limitations on how long you can stay out.
Marty B "You are what you eat"
Paul Rogers
news:a5b8d8$2gqbg$1...@hades.csu.net...
The most popular food for this sort of activity in Australia is what we call
scroggin or trail mix. This is a mix of seeds, nuts and dried fruit. What
you are eating at the moment is probably okay though.
Paul R
Steve Harris
<9Dce8.7587$RV3....@news-server.bigpond.net.au>...
If you're going to make an all purpose heavy duty trail mix, you may as well
vary it a bit. Use some other nuts as well (not just cashews-- splurge and
get a fancy mix), and also use a variety of dried fruit. And yes, with a
good vitamin you can live on this safely for a long time indeed. Note
however that despite the Gatorade, potassium is likely to be low in a mix
without dried fruit, so don't run out of Gatorade powder, and use if very
freely, if you're going to do this. Not only does it supply your potassium,
but also because the sugar in it supplies the bit of carbohydrate (which
otherwise you'll need from the dried fruit) which makes high fat/protein
diets (e.g. nuts) much more efficient. If you have to make the sugar for
your brain out of the protein in the nuts, you're wasting a lot of it. The
old time Arctic explorers having to live on a very high fat diet (eg fish,
blubber, etc) reported that just a few crackers a day maked a noticeable
difference in how they felt. That was doubtless the carbo content.
SBH
SBH
--
I welcome email from any being clever enough to fix my address. It's open
book. A prize to the first spambot that passes my Turing test.
Bruce Bowen
Here's what not to do. One hot summer day I went on a 15 hour round
trip hike to the top of Half Dome from the Yosemite Valley floor. I
had on a "Camel Back" water pack lightly spiked with some "oral
rehydration formula" (glucose, salt, potasium chloride), packs of
trail mix, and bags of dried fruit. The bags of dried fruit turned
out to be my undoing!!! Picture being on the top of Half Dome, a flat
100 acre granite table top, with hundreds of people around, and not a
PRIVY IN SITE!!!!! NOT A PRETTY SITUATION!!!! I had a very focussed
descent 'till I could get to the forest to find a tree!
Steve Harris
> Here's what not to do. One hot summer day I went on a 15 hour round
>trip hike to the top of Half Dome from the Yosemite Valley floor. I
>had on a "Camel Back" water pack lightly spiked with some "oral
>rehydration formula" (glucose, salt, potasium chloride), packs of
>trail mix, and bags of dried fruit. The bags of dried fruit turned
>out to be my undoing!!! Picture being on the top of Half Dome, a flat
>100 acre granite table top, with hundreds of people around, and not a
>PRIVY IN SITE!!!!! NOT A PRETTY SITUATION!!!! I had a very focussed
>descent 'till I could get to the forest to find a tree!
I've seen that happen more with "rehydration solutions", if you must know.
Fruit generally takes longer to act-- even prunes. Osmotic diarrhea,
however, is pretty fast.
Alex
> Use some other nuts as well (not just cashews-- splurge and get a fancy mix),
Even then, he should still take *salted* nuts, shouldn't he?
Particularly if it's hot in the jungle. Because the sodium in
Gatorade would not be enough for replenishing the amount lost in
sweat.
Steve Harris
Absolutely. Salted nuts and high potassium/magnesium dried fruits are a
suspenders&belt approach to the electrolyte problem. Don't rely on Gatorade
alone.
Other classic solutions to this problem historically have been "pemmican,"
which has various recipies, but which was most often something like dry,
salted jerky (a lot of protein, with too little water to decay), which is
protected from water by a layer of fat (beef tallow), which also supplies
calories, along with some dry berries for carbos and plant minerals. Nuts
are probably a better answer to the protein/fat/sodium problem than jerky.
Travelers also used something called "rockihomminey" which was essentially
dried corn (hominy) with some molasses or brown rock-sugar. This would have
been a bit short of protein, but with some jerky or lean game supplement,
could also serve to let people travel a long time, on a small food weight.
Paul Rogers
news:4f17fab7.02022...@posting.google.com...
Depends to some extent on his salt consumption in normal life. The body gets
conservative and adaptive when deprived of salt/sodium.
Many long-distance athletes, who train in hot weather regularly, eat a
minimum of salt and have few problems. However, if he's trekking for eight
hours in the tropics and is used to a relatively salty diet, he better
replace or else.
Paul R