Think About Weight
In recent years, outdoors enthusiasts have begun to think very seriously about the weight of the equipment we carry, as well as our clothing and footwear. Titanium cooking and eating gear, silnylon or cuben fiber tarps, lightweight trail shoes: every gramme is crucial!
However, the same amount of mental effort has not really been applied to the food we eat. Here at Outdoors Grub we are committed to going lightweight in the outdoors: less weight means more fun!
Dehydrated food is clearly the best choice for hot meals when you have to carry your supplies. Water is heavy stuff and there's no point carrying it in your food when it's not necessary.
For snacks and lunch food, where you want something that's ready to eat and does not need rehydrating or cooking, you will want to check out how many calories you are getting per 100g carried, and the other nutritional information too. A bag of granulated sugar has lots of calories per 100g, but won't give you the slow release of energy over several hours that you need in the outdoors.
Packaging is worth thinking about too: ditch what you can and use lightweight polybags where possible. If you have to carry food for many days, it may be worth decanting food from most of your "cook in the pouch" pouches into lighter, less bulky polybags, and just carrying a couple of pouches (which you can wash clean after each use). Remember that the food will not keep for anything like as long once decanted in this way, though.
When travelling solo, one cooking pot holding around 700ml to 900ml is enough, and a spoon is all you need to prepare food and eat it with (I'll carry a spare spoon on trips of more than 2 or 3 days, just in case!). An insulated mug is good to drink from.