[pct-l] Trail Food

[spiritbear2k@hotmail.com (Ginny & Jim Owen)]

Monte wrote:
>  My point is that Brian's diet was far from ideal by normal standards.
<snip>
>As I stated before, no such word as a bad calorie!!!!
<snip>
>I would say anyone who ate as Brian did, would fair well. (Unless you are a 
>diebetic)

I am, Monte - and I've survived 3 thruhikes with about the same diet that 
Brian used.  And I'll survive another three - or more.


>Calories are fuel and the more the better. ( And your body ain't 
>picky!!!!!!!!! Get It???)

Calories are the name of the game - without them you die - maybe not 
literally, but you won't finish a thruhike.  The only requirement of food on 
the trail is CALORIES - lots of them.  Anything else is icing.  There was 
recently a story on another list about a guy who insisted that since the 
Liptons package said "feeds 2" that he only needed half a Liptons each 
night.  He didn't finish - and he didn't deserve to finish.  Stupidity has 
its own rewards.

It's not necessary to eat an organically correct, carefully balanced diet - 
or even, as some insist, a "varied" diet - or even one that "tastes good".  
Those are cultural artifacts that are provably wrong - all you have to do is 
look at the lifestyle (either before or after the present unpleasantness) in 
Afghanistan.  People survive there.  Thruhikers also survive.  As Stewart 
said: "Apparently a healthy human being can manage on a surprising diet."  
He seems to be surprised by that.  And frankly (and this is a general 
observation, not just personal to him), that's an indication of the 
ignorance that's rampant in this country.  People have survived for 
centuries on diets that some (yeah - even some on this list) would gag at.

Tough. Keep in mind that if Mssr. Bin Laden gets his way you'll all be 
eating that kind of diet.


And then "bill blovis" wrote:
>That's your opinion. But, no offense, you ain't The New England Journal of 
>Medicine, and I don't see any clinical trials to back up your claim that 
>"anyone would fair well" with a diet consisting of junk food.

Sorry, Bill, but the "clinical trials" you're looking for happen every year 
- there are a lot of people who spend 3 to 6 months on the Trail every year. 
  They survive - happily and, for the most part, healthily - on the diet you 
seem to object to.

As a sidebar here, that single remark labels you as a "non-thruhiker" 
because it's a level of ignorance that few, if any, real thruhikers retain 
after completing a couple thousand miles - on any trail.


>Like seemingly every conversation on this list, we're expressing two 
>subjective opinions with little other than personal experience to support 
>them -- your solution works for you; it worked for Brian. Good for you 
>guys.

Let's see here - Ginny and I have completed a combined 7 thruhikes as well 
as several thousand miles of backpacking on other trails.  I'd suspect that 
our "personal experience" has some pretty solid validity.  In addition, 
nearly all of our friends have completed at least one thruhike (one of them 
has completed 12) and their experience pretty much matches ours.  Just how 
much "experience" do you think it takes to make it more than just "opinion"?


>But posting multiple exclamation-pointed notes that pretend to be the final 
>word -- but that merely state your opinion about a really complex subject 
>-- is of little help to people who want to derive useful information from 
>this list.

You're being given the information.  Your rejection of that information 
doesn't make it any less valid - it just labels you as someone who just 
wants to argue, not learn, .

And there's nothing that complex about the subject.  If you're gonna 
thruhike, you need CALORIES.  Anything else is extraneous - nice, but not 
necessary, the icing on the cake, whatever.  Taste?  - after the first 
thousand miles, you don't taste what you're eating anyway.  Vitamins?  
Minerals, fiber, protein?  If you're putting away the CALORIES you need, 
you'll get what you need - and if you don't get it, your body will tell you 
about it - and demand that you eat those foods that WILL give it to you.  
Ever wonder why pregnant women (reportedly) crave pickles?  Actually, the 
mother of my children DID go through that stage with the first one, but not 
with the others.

Which, finally, brings us to the point of this little exercise - as a troll, 
you don't rate very highly.  We had a better one last night on another list. 
  At least he provided us with a laugh.  What's your point?

Walk softly,
Jim


************************************************************
"Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It 
eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the 
business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation." -- Johnny Hart


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