Re: [pct-l] PCTResearch

["Brett Tucker" <blisterfree@hotmail.com>]

>One of the possible outcomes of PCTResearch will be to see if all trail
>diets are equal in supplying the necessary fuel to maintain extended 
>periods
>of physical activity. I'll be looking at 20 trail diets in detail and
>analyzing them for nutritional content and then matching the outcomes with
>trail performance and changes in the physical body.


This sounds like a great idea. If there's one subject that has not been well 
researched, it's trail nutrition. Nutrition is a fuzzy term, though, 
frequently misused, only partially understood. Nutrition labels, for 
instance, are worthless, since the FDA's standards for determining 
nutritional content is neither thorough nor entirely honest. But without the 
labels, how else can we determine, quantitatively, the nutritional content 
of food? I'm not sure, which is why I wouldn't even try. I'd probably just 
try plotting a one-to-one correlation between the foods eaten and the 
resulting energy and enthusiasm of the hiker. In such a study, all foods 
would get their fair shake, no preconceptions and no "supporting" 
nutritional data. To see if Twinkies support long distance hiking, just look 
at the hiker eating Twinkies and see what happens. Same with the hiker 
eating broccoli. (And, too, for the savvy hiker eating Twinkies and 
broccoli.)

All trail diets are definitely not equal, but then neither are the ways in 
which hikers' bodies respond to various foods, the hikers' metabolisms, 
their natural tendency to lose or gain weight on the trail, etc. However, I 
suppose the more hikers that were analyzed, the more one could reach certain 
rough conclusions about what constitutes the "ultimate" trail diet. Sounds 
like a noble goal.

- Blisterfree


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