I Heart Pacific Northwest

Updated 10/02/2025

The key to meal planning for backpacking is to bring food that is calorie dense and lightweight.

Backpacking is hard work, so it’s important to provide your body with enough to sustain you without weighing down your pack. Your food also needs to be appealing to eat, because it’s not uncommon to experience a loss of appetite when you’re tired from exertion.

How much food is needed for a backpacking trip?

You may have heard the general recommendation on bringing 1-1/2 to 2 pounds of food per day. However, instead of relying on the weight of your food bag to ensure you have the correct amount, pay attention to the nutrition info, especially calories. Adjust the amount of food needed based on trip exertion and duration: for shorter trips, take smaller, less caloric meals; for extended or strenuous trips, plan for larger high calorie meals. This calorie calculator from Backcountry Foodie is very helpful in determining how many calories you might need for a trip.

Creating a Meal Plan

To get started, make a list of how many breakfasts, lunches and dinners will be needed. Consider the trip timeframe when planning a menu – depending on when your trip starts and ends, you likely won’t need to take breakfast for the first day, or dinner for the last.

Also keep in mind what each day of a trip entails, for example, on days with strenuous hikes, you’ll want meals that are simple to prepare. And on easier days, you’re likely to have more energy for meals that take bit more time to prepare. Or maybe add in a dessert for an after dinner treat when you have more time to enjoy it.

Once you know how many and what types of meals that you need, write a menu plan for each day of the trip. List what you’ll take for each breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as snacks, beverages, and condiments.

Visualizing a trip menu is another good method for determining how much food you need. To do this, lay out all of the meals on a table or countertop in rows for each day. This way, you can see how much food you have for each meal – and will help to make sure you bring enough but not too much. To determine the amount of snacks you’ll need, package all of your snacks into individual bags – one for each day of a trip.

Planning for Emergencies

It’s always a good idea to add in a few extra trail bars or an additional meal for just in case. Sometimes trips are extended for reasons out of our control such as accidents or weather, and having food in these times can make a difference in our abilities to think clearly and keep energy levels up when needed.

My Approach to Meals

Breakfast: Oatmeal is pretty standard breakfast food, likely due to the ease of prep and availability of instant oatmeal options. I prefer to make my own, adding sliced almonds, hemp seeds (or chia seeds), whole milk powder, and freeze-dried berries for flavor. I also love hash browns or biscuits and gravy for breakfast.

Lunches can make a big difference in the overall weight of your food bag. Snacks and typical backpacking lunch staples — like tortillas and tuna packets — often add up to more weight than you’d expect, sometimes even more than pre-packaged meals. One way to save weight while still getting balanced nutrition is to go with cold-soak options, such as pasta salads or other no-cook meals. I’ve been enjoying the no-cook meals from Good to Go, which are easy to pack and satisfying on trail. I’ve also learned from experience that I don’t need to bring nearly as many snacks as I used to; instead, I focus on meals with substantial calories that keep me fueled without weighing me down.

beef or turkey jerky
cheese sticks
crackers
trail bars
peanut butter pretzels
dried fruit – mango slices, coconut strips, figs, dried apples
my own mix of nuts and seeds: pistachios, peanuts, cashews, almonds, pumpkin seeds, and sunflower seeds
cold soak meals from Good to Go

DYI Trail Bars

While they take time to make, making your own trail bars cost much less than purchasing from the store. Plus you can customize the flavor for exactly what you like. My favorite so far is a recipe I modified by adding candied ginger, ground ginger, and cardamom to a rice crispy-style bar. Mmmm. I also make a sesame oat bar and a white chocolate chip peanut butter protein bar. These bars aren’t too sweet and they stay soft, which is a nice change from crunchy bars.

Dinner: After exclusively making all of my own backpacking meals for over seven years, I recently found a few companies making freeze-dried meals that I really like. Having been a firm holdout in the “I’d rather make my own” camp for a long time, this is quite a switch for me. I can say that I am now a firm believer in convenience — if you can find meals that you look forward to. A bonus is that I spend less time on kitchen camp chores and have more time to relax. Or hike.

View a list of my favorite freeze-dried backpacking meals from Pinnacle Foods, Peak Refuel, Mountain House, and Backpackers Pantry.

Make Your Own Dinners

When I started backpacking and tried a few commercial meals, I didn’t like anything well enough to spend the money on them. So, I started making my own meals. In the beginning, I made curries, ramen, and other spicy Asian dishes. But I found that my stomach doesn’t like anything even slightly spicy when I’m backpacking, and my taste buds crave something simple and home style. Especially starchy foods like rice, pasta, and potatoes.

After making my own meals for the first five years of backpacking, I teamed with a good friend to create a cookbook with recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and desserts. A few of those recipes are on this website:

Another great option for making your own meals with less emphasis on dehydrating is Backcountry Foodie. The recipes (membership required) on the Backcountry Foodie site were created by a registered dietician and experienced thru-hiker.

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