[pct-l] high fat food; pants

[Dan Africk]

I too consider myself a fairly knowledgeable yet amateur
nutritionist(though I helped run a food coop and I've been vegan for
many years, so I think I'm doing something right), anyway here's my
take:

How much fat you eat isn't as important as the proportions of fat to
protein and carbohydrates, and the types of fat you are consuming.
Fats are not only important but essential to a healthy diet. Saturated
fats are not necessarily bad, but they should be consumed in much
smaller amounts than unsaturated fats(including mono- and
poly-unsaturated fats).  So if you eat a lot of saturated fat, it
would be could to also eat things like olive oil, or my favorite,
toasted sesame oil. Trans fat is a completely different situation,
since it rarely occurs in nature, and most doctors and nutritionists
agree that it is very bad and should be avoided as much as possible.

In my opinion the majority of calories should come from
carbohydrates(ideally complex carbohydrates from whole grains, not
simple carbs like sugar), which is the most efficient form of energy
for our body to process. Protein is very inefficient for our bodies to
burn as fuel(which is why the atkins diet works), so really we should
only eat enough protein to supply what we need for growth, repair, and
everything else our bodies use protein for. Most americans consume
vastly more protein than we need, which contributes to a variety of
diseases ranging from kidney problems to osteoporosis. We probably
only need about 10% fat, but you can probably eat more than that and
still have a healthy diet. I think a very rough ratio of a healthy
diet for non-thru hikers is about 75% carbs, 15% protein, 10% fat. I
don't know what the ideal thru-hiking ratio is, but I'm sure protein
needs would go up, and for practical reason you would want more fat to
be able to meet calorie needs.
Of course fat is by far the most calorie dense, since it has 9
calories per gram instead of 4 calories per gram as both carbs and
protein do(although protein provides less energy do to inefficient
digestion). Therefore it makes sense for thru hikers to have a much
higher proportion of fat, which I don't think is very bad as long as
they are healthy fats. I plan on eating a ton of fat on the trail, but
I'll be eating even more carbs, plenty of protein, and hopefully I'll
have a descent amount of fiber.


As far as pants, I highly recommend the REI Sahara Pants. Light,
comfortable, durable, zip-off legs, lots of pockets, fairly cheap, and
awesome in every way.