When you look to carry food in your backpack, you need to keep a few things in mind. Depending on what else you are carrying inside of your backpack, you won’t want food that will melt or spoil easily. Imagine if you were carrying expensive textbooks inside your backpack and then you carried a candy bar or a protein bar and it melted chocolate all over your books, ruining them. That would be horrible. Text books are not cheap and chances are those wouldn’t be the only things of value inside of your backpack. So make sure you are conscious of the best backpacking foods so that you don’t end up ruining your backpack or any of its contents.
Temperature
When you keep your backpack closed for an extended length of time, it can become quite hot and stuffy inside of there. This will increase the chances of your food spoiling or of your contents getting ruined, especially if it’s vegetarian backpacking food. Cold weather will have more of a preserving effect than hot weather, so if it’s going to be hot, the best backpacking foods would be packaged very well, preserved very well and the foods should not be susceptible to melting or spoiling in extreme heat.
Length Of Time
How long is the food going to remain in your backpack before you eat it? The best backpacking food for long trips include beef jerky, canned goods and other packaged items that are meant to stay fresh for long periods of time. You don’t want to carry fruit or anything perishable in your backpack if it’s going to stay in there for days on end. This will like only end up badly, with the food spoiling or you attracting insects into your bag.
The best backpacking food will be packaged very well, with no air allowed inside. Zip lock bags work great for this, but the packaging that comes from the manufacturer, such as the tinfoil packs that Pop Tarts come in, will work even better. As long as air doesn’t get to the food, as long as the food doesn’t melt or spoil, and as long as you keep your mind on the temperature, any food will do for whatever occasion you happen to be carrying your backpack for.
If you need help coming up with the best backpacking food for an extremely long trip, hit the internet as there are many backpackers, campers and hikers who will have lots of tips for you as far as what foods you should bring with you.