Food on the trail has been a very difficult thing to figure out and still is for me anyway, how to pack calorie dense foods that will give you the most for their weights and still taste good.
One thing I have never done is snack, when I pack food I would plan the three meals of the day and bring nothing else, this is one of the major mistakes I will correct this hiking season, snack and snack allot! or at the very least plan a morning and afternoon break for throwing down a couple hundred more calories.
The next most important thing is variety, I don't know what it is about the mountains but not only is it hard to find good food you actually want to eat but when you find it you will get sick of it very quick!, I made a huge mistake last summer on a 6 week hike to say "I eat the same thing for breakfast at home every day for months so I can do it out there for 6 weeks no problem!" WRONG!! I brought cinnamon toast crunch kids cereal to eat on 90% of the mornings and not even half way through I was forcing it down and wont be eating it any time soon! I talked to two others on the trail that said the same that after their trip one of them hasn't eaten oat meal for 4 years since and the other it was salami, so keep what your eating in good variety or you could find yourself not having as much fun as you would like, nothing picks up the morale like a meal you love!
Here is a useful
nutrition chart that shows allot of trail foods and their nutrition facts.
When it comes to packaged meals one brand I have found to be very good is Enertia brand meals, they aren't freeze dried but just dehydrated and they all come with single serving packets of salt and pepper, I never got tired of them but the down sides include that they have no meat and are only about 400 calories.
A good lunch is your basic tortillas, salami, cheese and whatever else you would like, I have brought onion also to add and if you can bring some condiment packets such as thousand island dressing it makes for a good wrap, down sides include weight and if you bring block cheese it gets greasy but has a record for staying good while not being refrigerated, a solution to that I just picked up is individually wrapped string cheese.
