Trekking Foods: The Do’s, The Don’ts & The Downright Disgusting

1. Do make a nutrition plan

Making a nutrition plan is overlooked by so many trekkers, but it is absolutely crucial for longer wilderness trips.

It’s really important to understand how many calories your body needs per day. This will be significantly higher than your normal base caloric intake when not trekking. For example, when I’m on trail, I typically need around 4,000 calories per day just to maintain equilibrium.

Once you work out your daily caloric requirements, you can start planning how to break those calories down into specific food groups.

Carbohydrates, proteins and fats are the three major food groups in the backcountry. Sadly, it’s extremely difficult to get adequate fruit and vegetable nutrition on longer trips, as fresh produce perishes quickly. Consuming enough carbohydrates, particularly in the morning, is essential, ideally slow releasing carbohydrates like oatmeal is perfect. You then want to sustain that energy throughout the day with fast releasing snacks like chocolate, gummy sweets, granola bars, and dried fruit.

The evening is the optimal time to consume most of your protein, helping promote muscle recovery after a long day on trail.

Making a nutrition plan doesn’t have to be complex. Below is a very simple nutrition plan I personally follow. Feel free to use it or adapt it as you wish.

If you’re a global vagabond trekking around the world like myself, you’ll quickly learn the importance of having a flexible nutrition plan.

Food availability varies massively from country to country, and adapting can be challenging. For example, Nepal is set up for hiking tourism, and you’ll find granola bars in almost every shop in Kathmandu. In Kyrgyzstan, not so much. Instead, you’ll mostly find questionable Russian chocolate.

This is why flexibility is so important. If you can’t find what you crave, look for clever alternatives. If you’re heading out on a shorter trip, it can also be worth bringing your favourite snacks from home to your trekking destination.

2. Do focus on caloric density

If you’re like me and have already accepted your fate, knowing you’re going to turn into a mountain mule, go full Russian mountaineer mode, and stop caring about how much weight you’re carrying, then you can probably ignore this section.

Otherwise, keep reading…

When I say caloric density, I’m referring to focusing on highly caloric foods that don’t take up too much space or weight in your pack.

Especially on longer backpacking trips, every calorie and every gram matters. Below are some great examples of calorically dense backpacking foods to consider for your next trek.

• Nut butters: Peanut butter and almond butter are no secret in the trekking world. You could also consider taking butter, or ghee if you have the luxury of being in India or Nepal.
• Salamis: Although incredibly unhealthy and full of preservatives, salamis keep well and are extremely calorie dense.
• Cheese: Most people look confused when I say I take fresh cheeses into the wilderness, as if they won’t last long. In reality, most cheeses will last up to five days, especially in cooler conditions, and they are an excellent source of calories and fats.
• Milk powder: This is about as good as it gets for calorie to weight ratio. In 100 grams of milk powder, you get roughly 500 calories.
• Nuts: Walnuts, pecans, and Brazil nuts contain around 750 calories per 100 grams, not to mention being an excellent source of protein.

3. Do try and ration your food throughout your trek

In other words, don’t eat all your favourite food in the first couple of days.

Unfortunately, I am very guilty of this. I’ve often eaten my entire ten day ration of salami, cheese, and favourite gummy sweets within the first few days, leaving myself with nothing but bland, boring food for the remaining eight days. And trust me, flavour fatigue hits quickly, and it hits hard.

That’s why rationing is so important.

One small trick I’ve had success with is assembling a little lunch box at the start of the day, when I’m not dealing with major cravings. I set this aside and keep it easily accessible in the side pocket of my backpack throughout the day. As for the rest of my food, I try to make it as inaccessible as possible.

As for the midnight sugar cravings, that’s a completely different issue that I’m yet to resolve, and most likely never will.

4. Do treat yourself and take a few days’ worth of fruits and vegetables

I know this one splits opinion and directly contradicts the second “do” about focusing on caloric density, as fruit and vegetables are pretty much the opposite of that. But sometimes, you have to choose your luxuries on trail.

You definitely won’t have the luxury of a light backpack, but the way I see it is that all of this food will be eaten within the first few days anyway. So what’s the big deal in carrying a few extra kilos early on?

• Apples: Heavy as hell, but absolutely worth it for the freshness.
• Red peppers (capsicum): A great addition to evening meals to freshen things up a bit.
• Tomatoes: Excellent alongside evening meals or lunches, but they squash easily and can make a massive mess.
• Grapes: I usually buy them right before leaving the city and eat them all on the first day for a little extra kick of motivation.

5. Do think about digestion, not just calories

It may seem obvious, but people still ignore it. You have to consider your gut health while on trail.

First things first: having a diverse variety of food on trail is crucial. No matter how “healthy” a food is, eating too much of any one thing makes it difficult for your body to digest. The result? You end up hiking with a bloated stomach, feeling low on energy, and dealing with massive flavour fatigue.

For example, one guy I hiked with in Kyrgyzstan in autumn 2025 simplified his trekking food to oatmeal, dry nuts, lentils, pasta, olive oil and a few sweet treats for a nine day trek. Watching him eat such a tasteless diet was painful. He made it through the trek, but for large stretches he was low on energy and suffering gut complications. You can imagine the rest.

That’s why it’s important to carry a good volume of easily digestible foods. On paper, nuts, lentils, and pasta sound like solid energy sources, but if your body can’t digest them properly, that energy never reaches your muscles.

My number one source of easily digestible carbohydrates these days is instant mashed potatoes. Literally just add boiling water. If you’re in Central Asia, you can find them in larger supermarkets like Globus or Frunze.

6. Do consider dehydrating your own meals

It’s a somewhat unconventional approach, I must say, but boy is it a game changer.

Never in a million years would I have considered this before meeting Ian, fellow Co-Founder and Mountain Guide at Great Goat Expeditions. Each off season, Ian prepares around 250 backcountry trekking dinners using his own dehydrator, from chillies to daals to chickpea curries. He then ziplocs each meal separately and carries them over to Central Asia for the full season in a massive duffle bag.

Unconventional, but innovative, right?

It’s a fantastic idea if you have the chance. Dehydrated meals are excellent sources of macronutrients and are also fibrous, perfect for that evening meal. Considering that both Central and South Asia don’t have the luxury of pre made dehydrated meals available in supermarkets, this might be the only alternative, and it’s surprisingly budget friendly too.

7. Do pack an extra day’s food, JUST IN CASE

This is really important on longer wilderness trips where there are limited quick routes back to civilization. I know it can go against the whole concept of ultralight backpacking. Often that extra day’s food won’t be necessary, and you’ll end up carrying it out of the mountains.

However, you never know what lies ahead. Sometimes the terrain is much more challenging than the maps suggested, or someone in your group gets injured and you fall behind schedule. In those situations, it’s absolutely worth carrying the extra weight to ensure you have the food needed to get safely out of the mountains.

Of course, the longer the trek, the greater the potential for falling behind schedule. As a general rule, I normally carry 10% more calories than I anticipate needing based on the number of trekking days. Though that doesn’t help when I eat through five days of food in the first two days.

1. Don’t ever think buckwheat, MSG, and beef salami is a good combination

It really isn’t.

Back in the early days of my trekking career, I stumbled across the combination of buckwheat (or grechka, as our Russian friends call it), MSG, and beef salami. I would personally describe this as one of the most disgusting backcountry culinary disasters known to mankind.

The worst part is that I spent an entire summer making this meal almost every night while camping in Kyrgyzstan.

2. Don’t restrict your consumption of sugars

This is a hard concept to sell to the health freaks out there, but you need to treat your trail diet and your normal city diet as two completely separate things. It goes without saying.

On strenuous trips where you’re hiking eight to ten hours a day, your body is in constant need of fast energy. It simply can’t get this from complex carbohydrates alone. The reality is that your body needs fast releasing glucose, which is mostly found in sweets, chocolate, biscuits, and similar foods.

I’m not trying to convince you that this is healthy, but it is necessary. At least on trail, your body is actually putting that sugar to use rather than unnecessarily storing it.

It probably also explains the positive correlation between long distance hikers and high dental costs. There’s no coincidence there.

3. Don’t eat food you dislike

I feel like there are a lot of people out there telling you what you should eat on a multi day trek. And okay, I get it to a point. You do need some structure and discipline in your backpacking meals to hit the right macronutrients and calories.

However, if you don’t like something that’s supposedly good for you on trail, don’t eat it. It really is that simple.

Think of it this way. If you eat foods you actually enjoy, your morale will be higher, and high morale is a type of fuel in itself.

In the early days of my trekking career, I used to pack a lot of dried fruit such as apricots, raisins, and banana chips, because they’re commonly recommended as a source of fast energy. I never really enjoyed them, and over the months and years I became increasingly tired of forcing them down.

It wasn’t until last year, in 2025, that I finally ditched dried fruit altogether and used that weight allowance for actual fresh fruit, or simply more gummies and chocolate. Foods I could genuinely look forward to when I found that perfect spot on a mountain to stop for a coffee break.