Wild camping food: how much to pack, and what to cook

670 kcal. That is what Trek’n Eat’s beef stroganoff with rice, from Katadyn, delivers once you do the sum: 160 g of dry food, which the manufacturer presents as a meal for one person [1]. On paper, it’s a dinner. Set against a day’s walking with a loaded rucksack, it is about 15% of what someone weighing 70 kg burns. Let’s do the sums, from kilocalories to grams, then to the millilitres of water and grams of gas it takes to turn that pouch into a hot meal.

This guide follows on from our guide to water and food on a day walk, which ends back at the car: here, the day carries on with dinner, a night out and breakfast. It expands on the ‘Water and food’ step of our step-by-step guide to your first wild camp. The stove, pans and gas canister are in our kit list: we only come back to them to count the gas.

How much energy for a day with a rucksack

To put a number on an effort, the researchers behind the Compendium of Physical Activities use the METMetabolic equivalent: the ratio between the energy cost of an activity and that of resting. 1 MET is about 1 kcal per kilo of body weight per hour, roughly what you burn sitting quietly. [2]. ‘Backpacking’, walking self-sufficiently with a big rucksack, rates 7 MET there, and climbing a 5 to 20% slope with 9 kg or more on your back, at a good pace, 10 MET [3]: for someone weighing 70 kg, an hour’s walking with a loaded rucksack costs 490 to 700 kcal, depending on the terrain.

A trekking day is more than the walking. Let’s split it into 24 hours: 6 hours of actual walking at 7 MET, 3 hours around camp at 2.5 MET, the value the Compendium gives to camping, then 9 hours of sleep and 6 hours of meals and sitting breaks, at 1 MET each. For 70 kg, that comes to about 4,500 kcal, two thirds of it for the walking alone; for 55 kg, about 3,500 kcal, and for 90 kg, 5,800.

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For comparison, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) puts the average energy requirement of an adult aged 30 to 39 with a moderately active lifestyle at 2,000 to 2,600 kcal a day, depending on sex [6]. A trekking day therefore calls for nearly twice that. These figures are orders of magnitude, not a ration to weigh out: they assume 6 hours of actual walking, stops excluded, and an average MET for everyone.

For a single night, there’s no need to aim for the exact figure. The French Hiking Federation (FFRandonnée) asks for an intake in proportion to the effort, with no needless excess, but with enough energy, taken regularly, to avoid running out of steam and slowing down [7]. On a trek of several days, on the other hand, this sum becomes the basis of the shopping list.

From kilocalories to grams: energy density

That leaves turning these kilocalories into weight in the rucksack. The tool for the job is energy densityThe energy in 100 g of a food, in kcal: it tells you how many grams you need to carry for a given amount of energy., given on the label or in a food composition table, such as the Swiss Food Composition Database from Switzerland’s Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO), in its July 2026 version [8]. The gaps are spectacular: 1,000 kcal weighs 140 g in walnuts, 190 g in dark chocolate, 280 g in dried pasta, 380 g in bread and nearly 2 kg in apples.

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The difference comes down to one word: water. A raw apple is 85% water, a tomato 94% and cooked pasta 60%, against 10% for dried pasta and 4% for walnuts [8]. Fats, for their part, concentrate energy: 900 kcal per 100 g of olive oil, when dry starchy foods hover around 350 kcal. Apply these figures to our 4,500 kcal day: at an average of 450 kcal per 100 g, it fits into 1 kg of food; at 250 kcal per 100 g, with plenty of bread and fresh fruit, you need 1.8 kg.

A well-planned food bag therefore combines dry starchy foods as the base, nuts, hard cheese or cured meats to raise the density, and a little fresh food as a treat for the first evening. Tins, heavy and bulky, stay at home, as the French Hiking Federation advises [7]. As for the gram-counters, they have already spotted the best deal on the chart: 15 g of olive oil stirred into the pan adds 135 kcal.

Freeze-dried or homemade: weight, water and time

There is nothing magic about a freeze-driedDried by cold: the water is taken out of the food at low temperature, which makes it lighter and lets it keep without refrigeration; adding water brings it back. meal: the manufacturer has taken its water out, cold, and you put it back [9]. The label tells you everything. Trek’n Eat’s beef stroganoff takes 380 ml of boiling water and 10 minutes’ standing, for 540 g of ready meal, 3.4 times the weight of the pouch, and keeps for 5 years [1]. The chicken couscous from Voyager, a French brand that makes its meals in France, weighs 80 g for 343 kcal: 140 ml of boiling water and a 5 to 8 minute wait, or 30 minutes with cold water [9]. Two ‘portions’, and half the energy in the second.

On the scales, the homemade dinner draws level: 165 g for about 670 kcal, the same as the pouch. The difference lies elsewhere. A freeze-dried meal rehydrates in its pouch, with no pan to scrub, and its label gives the amount of water; a homemade dinner is made to your taste, from supermarket shelves. As for the stove, semolina swells off the heat, like a freeze-dried meal, whereas pasta needs the flame on for its whole cooking time. Voyager’s portions run from about 80 to 150 g of dry food, and its meals provide 400 to 600 kcal on average [9]: look at the energy, not the word ‘portion’.

Cooking water and gas to allow for

The water for meals counts along with what you drink. For the menu below, one person heats 380 ml for the evening meal, 250 ml for a herbal tea, 250 ml for the porridge and 250 ml for morning coffee: about 1.1 litres, on top of the water for the walk. If it comes from a stream, water brought to a rolling boil for the meal is rid of its germs, provided it boils for 1 minute, and 3 minutes above about 2,000 m, according to the CDC, the US public health agency [10]. Rehydrating with cold water, on the other hand, needs water that has already been treated: our guide to water for wild camping compares the methods.

As for gas, MSR says its PocketRocket 2 stove brings 1 litre of water to the boil in 3.5 minutes, and boils 16 litres with a 227 g canister of gas [11]: about 14 g of gas per litre. Our menu therefore needs 16 g, for 4 minutes of flame. In the manufacturer’s conditions, a 110 g canister would last nearly seven nights on this regime.

Out on the hill, the figures are less generous. MSR points out that its windshield improves the stove’s efficiency in breezy conditions [11], and has formulated its IsoPro gas to keep a higher pressure at low temperatures [13]: a sign that wind and cold weigh on efficiency, just as simmering dishes weigh on consumption. For one night, I would allow double, and weigh the canister before setting off: an IsoPro canister holding 110 g of gas weighs 210 g full [13], so about 100 g empty, and the difference tells you what’s left. Finally, where an order bans even stoves, as our guide to campfire rules in France explains, you are left with cold rehydration and food that’s eaten as it comes.

Breakfast and snacks: hot in the morning, dense on the move

Breakfast follows the same logic as dinner: hot, quick, and no pan to scrub before you strike the tent. Voyager’s freeze-dried porridge weighs 100 g for 437 kcal and takes 250 ml of boiling water, then a 5 to 8 minute wait [14].

For snacks, the French Hiking Federation suggests dried fruit, cereal bars (avoiding chocolate ones when the sun is beating down) and a few biscuits that aren’t too sweet; for a sporty outing, fruit jellies and energy bars [7]. Keep them within reach, as in your day walk kit: on a heavy day, they bridge the gap between meals and what you burn. Finally, add a small reserve. The US National Park Service goes as far as recommending an extra day’s supply of food, preferably items that need no cooking, such as trail mix, nuts or cereal bars [15].

What copes with the heat without a fridge

On a wild camp there’s no fridge, and the rules of kitchen hygiene take on a new meaning. The Food Standards Agency says leftovers should be cooled and put in the fridge within one to two hours [16], and asks you to wash your hands with soap and warm water before preparing, cooking or eating food, or, where you can’t, at a picnic for example, to use hand-sanitising wipes or gel [17]. In the tent, the conclusion is obvious: cook what you’ll eat, and leftovers don’t keep until the next day.

The French Hiking Federation classes cheese and meat as perishable, to be eaten at the very start of a trip, before moving on to cured meats or freeze-dried meals [7]. Freeze-dried meals keep without refrigeration: up to 2 years depending on the recipe at Voyager, which asks you to eat a meal promptly once it has been rehydrated [9], and 5 years for Trek’n Eat’s stroganoff [1].

Rubbish, washing up and food at night

Whatever goes up comes back down. The Scottish Outdoor Access Code asks campers to take away all their rubbish and not to leave any food scraps, which might be eaten by animals and help to spread diseases [19]. The Leave No Trace principles, published by the US National Park Service, also advise repackaging food before you go, so there is less to carry out [20], and Mountaineering Scotland suggests reusable containers rather than single-use packaging [21]. For the washing up, Mountaineering Scotland asks you to do your cleaning downstream of camp, so that nobody draws water below your pans [21]; Leave No Trace goes further: carry the water 200 feet (about 60 m) away from streams and lakes, use a little biodegradable soap and scatter the strained dishwater [20]. A meal rehydrated in its pouch leaves only a spoon to wash, in any case. Our guide to leaving no trace on a walk covers the details.

At night, pack your food away: Leave No Trace asks you to protect wildlife and your food by storing rations and rubbish securely [20], and our guide to your first wild camp explains how, in the step ‘The night’. The same principles say never to feed wild animals, which damages their health and alters their natural behaviour [20], and Sport Ireland’s version warns that you can feed them by accident, by leaving food or rubbish lying around [22]. In American national parks with bears, the rule goes further: never store food in your tent or rucksack, place bear-resistant containers 100 feet (about 30 m) or more from camp, and check each park’s own rules before you go. To a bear, anything with a scent is food, soap, sun cream, rubbish and cooking utensils included [23].

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A sample menu for one night

Here, for one person, is a menu from the snack on arrival to the walk out the next day: the freeze-dried meal from the start, a homemade porridge and energy-dense snacks. The products named are label examples, not buying recommendations; the homemade dinner from the previous section would weigh as much as the pouch.

The lot weighs about 750 g for 3,100 kcal, reserve included, with 1.1 litres of water to heat, or 16 g of gas going by MSR’s figures. Without the reserve, the meals and snacks provide about 2,550 kcal: less than the energy worked out above, but a single night isn’t won or lost on a calorie, and lunch before setting off and on getting back is eaten at home. For a trek of several days, redo the day’s sums, with the walker’s weight and the hours of walking.

The rule to remember: aim for 450 kcal per 100 g, and a trekking day fits into 1 kg of food, with water and gas on top.

Julien de Jurquet

Campervans, motorhomes, cycling and calculators

Julien de Jurquet writes for Outfarer about campervans, motorhomes, cycling and calculators. He reads instruction manuals to the very end and never lets a figure through without its unit, so that your choices rest on sums rather than promises.

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