Sweet packaged stuff How many per day?

[Moondog55]

Chocolate bars/Mars bars / muesli bars/ CherryRipes / Snickers etc. How many per day is enough and now many is too much sugar?
Assuming the average bar is now about 88 grams each for candy and 40 grams for the muesli bars.
I have purchased too many for my 3 week stay and have about 5 per day stashed. Normally 2 muesli bars and 1 or 2 Mars per day is what I take
I eat too much sugar in winter I know

[vagrom]

Depends how many days. Long weekend: sky's the limit. Ten days away, where you've allowed for 900 gms total food per day, scgoggin's usually what's left after you've taken care of the essentials: b'fast, lunch and dinner.

Dried fruit, nuts chocolate and Meusli bars. What else is there? Would you err on the side of quality over sweet junk. Avoid the muck that goes into v. cheap lollies that might cause a bit of havock on a stressed body?

I don't know if it's too simplistic: straight sugar of say a Mars Bar gives you a spike whereas slower release carbo's of a decently built Meusli bar presumably helps one go the distance.
Again, decent chocolate's supposed to be an aphrodisiac. Wildlife beware...

[corvus]

I would include a couple of big bags of Jelly Beans.
corvus

[Rob A]

Switch your choc bars out for those "choc" protein bars the body builders use.
They are good for a meal and you can just chew off half an inch every few minutes and eat it while you are on the hoof.
The interesting thing is your body isnt stupid. When you need something you tend to crave, or develop a taste for it.
At the end of a seven or eight dayer I had a pre dawn in the rain pack up and it was easier to just coffee and bar rather than make something properly.
The bar tasted fine. In fact it was so good I brought a spare one home. Months later got it out for an after dinner treat Yuk.

[Pongo]

On multiday hikes I allow 100g of sweets / chocolate a day. I weigh the portions out before bagging them.

This passes as the dessert allocation in my meal planning. I go typically go with chocolate but do fudge, brittles etc... I like this as there is no cooking required. Almost always I will eat this just before or after I set up camp as a way of getting a quick fix before I start to wind down and prep dinner etc...

I'm interested to know people averages daily food weights. I tend only to carry around 680-700g's, so proportionately... 1/7th of all weight should be chocolate

[Orion]

The interesting thing is your body isnt stupid. When you need something you tend to crave, or develop a taste for it.

Is this really true?

I just finished reading a page in Bill Bryson's "At Home" where he said that salt deficiency does not lead to a craving for salt.
Admittedly Bill Bryson is not an authority on, well, he's not an authority on anything that I can think of. He's just funny.

But it reminded me of a conversation about twenty years ago. A pregnant co-worker was telling me that her need for calcium, due to her pregnancy, was causing a craving for ice cream. Ice cream is made from milk products which contain calcium. So I asked her if she was craving egg shells, Tums antacid tablets, or chalk. She looked at me funny and said no.

So I don't know if it's true. I crave all sorts of things that are definately NOT that good for my body. How does that fit in?


I think it's more complicated.

[GPSGuided]

I wonder how many walkers use energy supplements on their walks? In endurance sports, these things can certainly help to keep one out of trouble (bonking out). I have not used them on tougher walks but have always wondered, and whether they are better than chocolate bars.

[wayno]

i use them as snacks on the move mainly to tide me over between meals. two to four muesli bars, between meals
i used to use them for lunch as well. but when i go much over four i dont feel that well . probably the sugar..

[GPSGuided]

I wasn't referring to those regular muesli bars but those marketed sports energy supplements ie. Gels. Otherwise I also carry and consume muesli bars along the way to sustain. Regular muesli bars provides a slow release of energy, not like those dedicated stuff. Those things work in pretty dramatic ways.

[wayno]

he "polymer" gels and drinks are really for the high performance sports. absorbed faster than sugar even, can be expensive overkill on bushwalking trips.
protein bars are ok but too many can constipate you, a side effect of too much protein especially if theres not enough fibre.

[GPSGuided]

Yes, that's logical. Save those gel packages for trail runs than walks. Adding weight to packs is not ideal for joints, leaving the only way to increase energy expenditure on pace.

[stry]

I have been unable to find any "muesli" bars that are anything except cheap fat and sugar.

Two things that I haven't seen mentioned here are the Kiwi invented OSMs (OneSquareMeal) and the PowerBar. I am referring to the standard PowerBar used by triathletes, not the more specialized protein bars.

The OSMs are now available in the breakfast section of Safeway and a read of the label will show that they should be better than the usual pap "muesli" bars. I have been using them for many years.

The Power Bar is a real performer, in my experience. Neither are cheap, but both are good. I allow for one of each per day, and try not use all of the PowerBar. Because of the quality both are ideally suited to use as backup/reserve.

Like so many of us, I need to be very disciplined with the sweet tooth. My scroggin mix is nuts,seeds,dried fruit, dark chocolate thingies that are used to stick on cakes and muffins, and 6 to 8 jelly babies. I could easily get to like jelly beans, but prefer jelly babies.

I also weigh and bag this stuff into one or two day packages, particularly on a long trip, as otherwise the sweet tooth will win and the yummies will get scoffed far too quickly.

That's it - no Mars bars, Cherry Ripes (yum), Snickers, Peanut bars or anything else of that sort of thing

[stry]

Oops - just noticed Moondogs post re; OSMs,

[Mutley]

I generally allow 11,000 kj per day,if it is a strenuous trip. For snacks, I allow a 120 g bag of scroggin, ( un salted mixed nuts and chopped up snakes) and two of the highest kj muesli bars I can find. Every second day I will also allow one chocolate bar for dessert.

I don't stress too much about protein bs fat vs carbohydrate. What I look for is energy density, and any snack under 1800 kj per 100 g stays home.

I usually have a muesli bar for morning and afternoon snacks and graze on the scroggin throughout the day.

[michael_p]

The Power Bar is a real performer, in my experience. Neither are cheap, but both are good. I allow for one of each per day, and try not use all of the PowerBar. Because of the quality both are ideally suited to use as backup/reserve.

I've used the Powerbar Ride bars on longer (well long for me) bike rides and they are great. They sure give an energy boost when you need it. Usually find 1/3 to 1/2 a bar does the trick. For bushwalks I tend to have a nut scroggin mix and some jelly lollies like snakes. I just munch away when I feel like it.

[Kinsayder]

I'm aiming on changing this but I usually go pretty crazy with the sugars. Once I've got the pack on my back and I'm about to head off I'll down a Red Bull and after not too long I'll have started to knock off one of those huge chocolate blocks. My hydration bladder is usually full of Gatorade too. I know it's totally wrong and an abuse of my body but I can hammer out some decent ks that way. Next hike will see an abandonment of the Red Bull though (I'm pretty sure it's caffeinated poison) and a change from Gatorade to Powerade (apparently the lesser of two evils), nothing will pry the chocolate away from me though.

[perfectlydark]

I love V myself for the taste but avoid it if walking..always leads to a crash. Normally for snacks I tend to bring a nut mix (trying various kinds) or those indian spiced peas

[Kinsayder]

I find a crash comes if you let your sugar levels get low but the energy drink and chocolate prevent that. Caffeine has, I believe, been shown to reduce the impact of exercise related pain too, so it only really up using this method. Which is why it has been so enticing for me. The notion of what it does long term concerns me though, which is why I'll not be doing it quite like so in the future.

[Moondog55]

I allowed 3 per day and used a tenth of that, in the ~3 weeks I ate 1 Kram bar, 1 Snickers and 1 Cherry Ripe, I did how-ever use 2 full tins of Milo

[cooee]

I'm aiming on changing this but I usually go pretty crazy with the sugars. Once I've got the pack on my back and I'm about to head off I'll down a Red Bull and after not too long I'll have started to knock off one of those huge chocolate blocks. My hydration bladder is usually full of Gatorade too. I know it's totally wrong and an abuse of my body but I can hammer out some decent ks that way. Next hike will see an abandonment of the Red Bull though (I'm pretty sure it's caffeinated poison) and a change from Gatorade to Powerade (apparently the lesser of two evils), nothing will pry the chocolate away from me though.

Apart for the Red Bull, the rest, l concur.

[ryantmalone]

Chocolate bars/Mars bars / muesli bars/ CherryRipes / Snickers etc. How many per day is enough and now many is too much sugar?
Assuming the average bar is now about 88 grams each for candy and 40 grams for the muesli bars.
I have purchased too many for my 3 week stay and have about 5 per day stashed. Normally 2 muesli bars and 1 or 2 Mars per day is what I take
I eat too much sugar in winter I know

Just going to throw this one out there, but I generally try and avoid stuff that is too full of sugar when I am hiking, unless its natural sugar, like fruits and the such, or slow burning carbs that my body is going to convert to sugar over time.

On a trip to Feathertop last year, I decided to try out a new scroggin mix with peanuts, sultanas, licorice all sorts, jelly beans, and a few other jellies, and I felt that I crashed faster and harder than in the past when I was bringing just dried fruits. I'm talking within 15 - 20 minutes after eating sugars.

Not only that, but I got much thirstier as well which didn't help at all.

As for what I allocate, I generally fill a small zip lock back per day with nuts and sultanas, and snack on a few other things in between that contain slow burning carbs, like muesli bars, whole grain crisp bread, and so on. I leave my real sugar hits to when I'm done for the day.

A usual day for me is around one bag of scroggin, a muesli bar, some wholegrain crisp bread, and maybe something more sugary like a small bag of dried fruit towards the end of my day for a quick pick me up.

I just find that I have to be super careful with sugars when I am hiking, as too many can make me crash real hard, and its damn hard to recover when you crash.

[Kinsayder]

I totally get that, Ryan. I wish I could say that I ate two bananas before I headed off, with home dried fruit as scroggin along the way but I'm just not able to. I try to mix in some dried apricots and bananas into any nut mix I take but it really is a whole heap of chocolate and energy drinks. You really can't crash if you keep the levels consistently high either!

One day, I swear, I'll be better than this but right now it's just a functionality of hiking.