After a long day on the trail, your body needs nutritious food, which should be tasty and lightweight, to avoid killing the hiking performance while carrying extra weight. But what makes the best hiking snacks?
Depending on your hiking, trail length, difficulty, and backpacking duration, hiking snacks can vary from less nutritious to most nutritious, including high protein, vegan, keto, and vegetarian. For example, you can get away with simple snacks with even fewer calories on less technical, short trails, especially during weekend hikes.
However, if you are backpacking, your body needs more healthy snacks with high calories and protein to boost your body’s much-needed energy.
Plenty of snack options are in the market, from fresh food to dehydrated meals and dried fruits.
The choice varies depending on personal preference, type of hiking, length, and duration, as we mentioned above.
In this article, we will list comprehensive backpacking snack options, from homemade to specially produced snacks for outdoor use.
Best Hiking Snacks Options
Trail Mix
Trail mix is one of the most popular and commonly used snacks for hikers and backpackers because it is tasty, lightweight, healthy, has a long shelf-life, and is portable. This super snack is highly energy-dense and provides fiber, fats, minerals, and protein due to its healthy ingredients like nuts and fruits.
Trail mix is available in a variety from salty to crunchy and sweet, and depending on your preference and hiking activity, you can buy. The good thing is that it’s very easy to make at home if you prefer to make your custom trail mix with your preferred nuts and dried fruits. All you have to do is buy the ingredients, like different kinds of nuts and dried fruits, and then mix them at home and portion them in small packs.
We usually make our own trail mix at home to fully control our desired ingredients and quantity. But we sometimes also buy it online with ingredients like nuts, seeds, dried fruit, and sometimes chocolate or other sweets to change the taste. We have shortlisted the best trail mixes based on our experience and in-depth research, and here is a quick list.
- Power Up High Energy Trail Mix
- Happy Belly Trail Mix
- Power Up Protein-Packed Trail Mix
- Kar’s Sweet And Salty Trail Mix
- Nature’s Garden Omega 3 Deluxe Mix
Energy Bars
Energy bars are another compact and easy option for on-the-go backpacking snack options. If chosen wisely, energy bars are healthy snacks that provide plenty of crucial vitamins and minerals to boost energy.
Selecting an energy bar with high protein and carbohydrates will help you minimize your lunch and dinner intake on the trail. As a result, you can carry less food, thus saving you plenty of space and the critical time you have to cook food, which is challenging while you are away from your home kitchen.
Look at our comprehensive list of the best energy bars available in the market, which are healthy but also lightweight and compact. Here is the quick list.
- CLIF BARS Variety Pack
- Quaker Chewy Granola Bars
- LÄRABAR Variety Pack
- Honey Stinger Organic Honey Waffle
- Kate’s Real Food Bars
- KIND Protein Bars
Crackers
Crackers are a common snack that is widely popular due to their lightweight and delicious taste. However, not all crackers contain the healthy ingredients that your body looks for during a rigorous hike. Look for crackers with whole-grain ingredients, nuts, seeds, cauliflower and avocado for a healthy bite for the trail.
Crackers are a great hiking snack because they are lightweight, easy to pack, and tasty, which can be seasoned with salt, herbs, seeds, or cheese. For backpackers, healthy crackers are portable options that are much more lightweight than many other snacks, saving plenty of space in the pack.
Jerky
Beef jerky is another healthy hiking snack that provides plenty of protein and is a great source of iron and zinc if chosen wisely. It’s lightweight, compact, and has a long shelf life, suitable for long backpacking trips.
Hikers put a lot of effort into hiking those rough and rugged terrains, so for healthy bones and muscles, they need rich protein food on the trail and beef jerky is loaded with healthy proteins.
However, beef jerky also contains high sodium, which might lead to high blood pressure and kidney stones. Therefore, choosing the right beef jerky after carefully looking at the ingredients and trying different options is the best way to understand whether it’s healthy for you.
Fruits and Vegetables
Freshness and nutritional value make fruits and vegetables one of the best on-the-go snacks on the trail. Bananas and apples are popular options to carry. However, they are bulky if you plan to take the backpacking trips. Fruits are a great option for day and weekend hikes, where you don’t have to carry additional hiking gear. If you can find them on the trail, from mini shops, that can be the icing on the cake.
One of the best things about vegetables is that they are packed with nutrients like carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, and bell peppers.
This is important, especially when you are hiking in hot weather. Vegetables and fruits also help you to stay hydrated, especially during summer hiking, because they contain a lot of water.
Tuna and Goldfish
Tuna and goldfish are excellent options that you can easily get from stores in proper packing and pack in a compact form in a backpack. Not only are they delicious, but they also contain proteins, carbohydrates and omega-3 fatty acids that help to maintain the energy on the trail.
Look at StarKist Chunk Light Tuna in water; it is one of the good and tasty options available. Low on sodium, these won’t cause dehydration even if you take them during summer, but they are good options for your winter hikes.
How to Choose Best Backpacking Snacks
Here are some tips for choosing the perfect hiking snacks:
Nutritional Value
Rigorous hiking needs quality food that provides nutritional value to fulfil the hunger demand while being lightweight to boost the hiking stamina and help him build muscle. Therefore, nutritional value should be your top consideration when you look out for snacks.
Most of the hiking snack ideas we have given provide a variety of dietary values while maintaining a delicious taste. Trail mix, energy bars or granola bars can help offer you quick energy and keep you full for much longer and can help significantly reduce your lunch or dinner weight.
Additionally, incorporate protein-rich snack options like jerky and nuts to repair your muscles, which can really take trolling during hiking.
You should also take snacks that can provide sustained energy, like avocado or nut butter, that not only keep you full while hiking but also help reduce the dependency on proper lunch and dinner meals. As a result, you don’t have to prepare heavy lunches and dinners on the trail, which can save you plenty of time and weight.
If possible, go for fruit and vegetable options, especially during summer hikes, as they are not only refreshing but also help you stay hydrated to minimize the use of electrolyte powders. Prioritizing nutritious hiking snacks boosts your performance on the trails and contributes to your overall well-being during outdoor adventures.
Portability
Portability and light weight are crucial if you are backpacking. You want something you can easily carry in your backpack without adding too much weight or taking up too much space.
Therefore, hiking snacks should be lightweight and compact to cut every possible ounce while backpacking. For example, dried fruits, nuts, jerky, energy bars, and trail mixes are portable and lightweight.
Shelf-Stable
While backpacking, you spend most of your time on the hiking trails and may not find nearby stores to refill your snacks for days. Therefore, it is important to consider shelf-stable snacks that can withstand different weather conditions you encounter during a backpacking trip.
Refrigeration is not possible, and you pack it in your backpack, which can become hot due to its waterproofing material.
Fresh fruits and vegetables cannot survive much longer without maintaining the proper temperature, and it also becomes difficult to pack and carry them in a backpack.
Consider options like trail mix, mountain house meals, dried fruits, nuts, and jerky, as they can survive in almost all kinds of weather and have a long shelf life.
Another advantage of shelf-stable food is that it is typically lightweight and compact, so it helps you cut your weight.
Ease of Use
Snacks are usually made easy to consume even if you are on the go during backpacking. But still, make sure you opt for the snacks you can consume even without stopping on the trail.
Portable, pre-packaged options such as energy bars, trail mix, and dried fruits are excellent as they don’t require preparation or dehydration.
For dehydrated snacks, you must stop, remove your cookware from your backpack, boil the water, and put it into your dehydrated meals. This is time-consuming and takes much extra effort, which can reduce the hiking performance.
Likewise, ensure that there is not too much packaging that you have to open to eat the snacks, and it should be easier to dispose of the waste by leaving no trace policy.
Personal Preferences
It’s not necessary that if a snack holds great nutritional value, you will like it. Personal preferences play an important role when shortlisting and packing snacks for outdoor adventures.
For example, quality jerky is full of much-needed protein and also compact and lightweight. However, I personally don’t like its taste and always opt for an alternative according to my taste buds while still considering the healthy ingredients.
There is no hard and fast rule that you must follow when selecting from a predetermined list of hiking snacks. You can develop your own formula or custom recipe based on your taste buds while maintaining the nutritional value you need on the trail.
In the market, too, you can choose from plenty of healthy snack options. If we talk about trail mix, for example, you can find a variety of trail mixes with different ingredients; you can opt for whatever you like.
Summary
Snacks provide valuable nutrition on the trail that not only helps you to give sustained energy but also helps you to minimize the consumption of lunch and dinner food, thus saving your precious space in the backpack.
However, it’s important that you opt for hiking snacks that are nutritious and also provide the sustained energy to boost your hiking performance. Our best hiking snack options and ideas will help you choose the best possible snack for hiking.
What are your favorite snacks that you can use on your backpacking trips?
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