General ideas for food and their sources.

Great article. Thanks for sharing!

All good cooking begins with salt and learning how to salt appropriately. Backpackers, like all athletes, tend to use up salt rather quickly. Always bring salt. The average person needs about a teaspoon's worth of salt every day just to stay healthy. Salt is about 6 g per teaspoon, and 39.3% sodium by weight.

Chia seeds are loaded with alpha-linolenic acid (a short-chain omega-3 essential fatty acid) and as a seed rather than a grain, contain a complete complement of essential amino acids).

Masa harina makes delicious porridge or champurrado, is gluten-free and also much more nutritious than plain cornmeal. Masa harina, however, is quite fragrant, so you should probably keep it in a tightly-sealed container so as not to attract wildlife.

Native Americans used both chia and masa harina extensively in their travels, and still do today.

I would also recommend other "supergrains" or psudocereals, which are really seeds, not grains, like buckwheat, amaranth, quinoa, and teff. All of these are more nutritious than any grain.

Nothing has as much caloric content as pure fat, 9 calories per gram. Butter keeps just fine without refrigeration, if you keep it away from oxygen. Good butter has only about 17% water and solids, so although there's a slight weight penalty over lard or vegetable oil, you might prefer it. Cold-pressed canola oil is another excellent choice.

Whole milk powder like Klim or Peak can be reconstituted on the trail.

MSG (not even joking) makes everything super tasty.

I will second the Savory Choice stock concentrates, but also point out that Marmite is available in 8 g single-serving travel packs.

I will very much disagree with the article that says "The most durable “bread-like” medium for backpacking is definitely a flour tortilla", because flour is more durable, and can be easily made into sourdough pan bread on the trail. If you take a 1 qt twist-cap plastic container, you can add flour, water, and salt, and have pan bread the next day (assuming you have a frying pan). Store-bought tortillas are terrible for you, they are loaded with so many additives to keep them from going moldy on the shelf that no one should ever eat them. Sourdough pan bread made with teff flour is known as "injera" in Ethiopia, and is a staple of Ethiopian cuisine.

Bob's Red Mill sells Green Pea Flour, which is very high in protein and makes delicious instant soup.

Smithfield sells slices of country ham that doesn't actually need to be refrigerated. Unfortunately, you will not see these in supermarkets North of Washington, DC, because for some reason, people think only Southerners like country ham.

Wheat gluten powder can be used to make seitan on the trail, if you like that sort of thing. Or make it at home and dehydrate it.

Tubes of tomato paste.

Love the info from gcvrsa about the various flours.

But I'm not going to mention the Pringles potato chips and gummy bears that I always take on hikes.

Multi-use!

Fats and protein. That's what I strive for in the field. Carbs can stay home. OK, so chocolate carbs are just fine. They don't count while hiking.

One cereal I've discovered I really like is Tibetan tsampa (roasted cracked barley meal). Much like masa harina, it's used as an all-purpose travel food by people of the Himalayan region, often mixed with butter tea.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsampa

mk Many chips are so high in fat content that they burn easily. Fritos was the first time I heard of such. I have used Coke to dissolve concrete that inadvertently got into electrical pipes. Yes, that acid works for many things, but cannot compare to the acid naturally found in our stomachs.