Prepackaged or Homemade - Which Backpacking Meal is Best?

When we’re backpacking we enjoy being out in nature, breathing in fresh air, getting away from the rat race, and challenging ourselves to do hard things. All that is great!

But there are some things that can make backpacking less enjoyable. In the office one day, a few years back, I was telling my co-workers about a recent backpacking trip and one person said, after going backpacking once, that she would never go backpacking again because of the prepackaged food. She just didn’t like it. 

Well, that person obviously didn’t give much consideration to the other option: homemade meals.

With any other meal, choosing between homemade and prepackaged seems like a simple decision. Everyone loves a good home cooked meal. But on trail, it’s quite different than our home kitchens and a dinner table. So, some entrepreneurial minds saw an opportunity and have done a good job at discouraging what would be an otherwise easy decision. 

The way I see it, there are four primary things to consider:

• Convenience - how much time do you want to spend preparing meals, before the backpacking trip and again while you’re on trail?
• Variety and Taste - It’s no fun when our only option is eating something we don’t enjoy – day after day.
• Cost - We don’t want the expenses of backpacking to be so much that it keeps us from going on these adventures. It needs to be affordable.
• Nutrition - We need proper nutrition to replenish your depleted bodies after a long hard day, and that comes through what we eat. Nutrition is important.

Let’s go through these one at a time:

Convenience

Prepackaged

One of the biggest attractions to prepackaged meals is that they are super convenient. Just tear open the packet, add some hot water, wait a few minutes, and you're good to go. No preparation before the hike, except maybe a trip to the store or ordering your meals on-line. And also with prepackaged meals there is very little preparation at camp. 

Homemade

With homemade meals, it takes some time to put them together. You’ll need to pick up the ingredients, spend time cooking or assembling the recipe, maybe dehydrating, and packaging your food.

And then, in some cases, homemade meals take longer to prepare on trail. Not always. In fact, most of mine are as quick and easy as prepackaged. 

For me, prepackaged wins this category; they are more convenient than homemade meals.

Variety and Taste

Prepackaged

One could, over time, come up with a few prepackaged meals that are enjoyable enough to eat over and over again. 

Although my observation is that not many people enjoy eating the same thing every day. With prepackaged meals, the selections are limited and the taste and texture are pretty much set. A person could add hot sauce or somehow change it up a bit, but on the whole, these meals are limited in variety, taste, and texture. 

I’ve heard countless stories about how hikers can no longer eat some things because they’ve had it so much – it get disgusting – even nauseating. On longer trails, hiker boxes full of food people can’t stand any more. Hikers will even start exchanging their food with other hikers.

Homemade

If we go homemade, putting together a recipe allows us to customize every dish to our liking. Want more protein? Want more vegetables? Less salt? Want to swap one ingredient for another to change the taste? No problem. It’s your creation, make it the way you like it. There are utterly infinite possibilities here. 

And there are hundreds of recipes out there. Backcountry Foodie has hundreds. With homemade, this is no lack of variety, taste, and texture. 

I haven’t found anything prepackaged that replicates the rich flavors I can get out of my own kitchen. It takes a little experimenting, some trial and error, but in a short time, anyone can come up with great meals and continue to come up with more. 

Variety and Taste easily goes to the homemade option. 

Cost

Prepackaged

It can get expensive buying anything prepackaged. That is as true for daily life as it is for backpacking. Most prepackaged meals will cost between $10-15 per meal. A 10 day trip will cost at least $100 for only one meal per day. 

Homemade

Homemade meals are generally more cost-effective for a few reasons. 

• Needed ingredients may already be at home; there’s nothing more to buy.
• Backpacking meals can be made from dehydrating leftovers. Again, nothing more to buy.
• But if ingredients are purchased, typically it’s a bulk purchase that will be enough to create several meals, which reduces the cost per meal.

However, many meals require a dehydrator, which doesn’t need to be a big expense. And one could also choose meals that don’t require a dehydrator. 

There’s some ROI calculations could be done. But the inevitable is that after only a few trips, even with the dehydrator and bulk purchases, homemade will be cheaper.

Another option is to buy cheap prepacked junk food. I don’t recommend that ever. We’ll get into nutrition next. The cost category winner is homemade. 

Nutrition

As we get older, nutrition becomes a bigger factor. We start caring more about what we eat. This is the time of our lives where our parts start wearing out. Maybe bad food choices over the years are starting to catch up to us – A1C, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, bone density, vitamin deficiencies, maybe side effects from medications we take, etc., etc. 

It is wise to not downplay the importance of good nutrition, even for the young, and even if it’s for just a few days. Consuming what we shouldn’t has negative cumulative effects... and sometimes more immediate impacts. 

It’s simple, just decide to be good to yourself by eating food that promotes well-being and longevity.

Prepackaged

Some prepackaged meals are very nutritional with few additives, maybe with minimal processing, and possibly organic ingredients. If these can be found and are affordable, it’s a good option. 

But in most prepackaged options, they are more processed than desired, include a good amount of preservatives and additives, and the nutritional content is low or includes too much of what is not good for us. It is best to avoid all these things. 

Homemade

Maybe you have some dietary restrictions. No problem with homemade meals: you can adjust and customize every meal to fit your specific dietary needs. 

Also with homemade meals, quality ingredients can be chosen that have high nutritional content. Unless ingredients or of poor quality, homemade meals will be more nutritional. 

For those who don’t know how to choose great ingredients, maybe consider meals that have been formulated by a registered dietitian, meals that are specifically designed for what a backpacker needs. Backcountry Foodie is a great place to find such meals. 

Other Factors

A couple categories I didn’t cover here are the weight of the food and the “I’m not a good cook” reason. 

As far as the weight goes: If one is selective, homemade meals can be as light as prepackaged meals without being more bulky. So, weight and bulk are a bit of a wash for me. 

For those who think they need to be a good cook to make homemade backpacking meals, you should know that many recipes don’t require you to cook anything at all at home. It’s just a matter of putting measured ingredients into a bag. And on trail, you’re just adding water. It’s ridiculously simple. So, one’s culinary skill level is not a factor.

Which one wins? 

For me, obviously I choose homemade. But, like most decisions we make with backpacking, this isn’t a binary thing. 

When I asked my community on YouTube, most people do a little of both. The point I’m trying to drive home is that there are options – great options to make your backpacking food enjoyable. Don’t be like my former co-worker and decide to never go backpacking again due to bad food choices. 

Until next time – keep on Living Like You Want It!