T is for Trail Food

Justin Gold, the founder and owner of Justin’s Nut Butter, is a former REI employee. After searching in vain for good trail food, he tells me, he decided that he would have to make his own.

Mike MacFerrin reminded me of Jusin’s Nut Butter. Mike and I have at least three things in common: We have diabetes, we are avid hikers, and we live in Boulder.

Mike’s web page about “Hiking with Diabetes” has many other great suggestions for what to eat on the trail, especially when we start to go out on longer hikes. And I do mean longer. Mike’s website details his experiences on solo hikes of eight, 16, 17, and even 31 days.

For years the third trail food that I have relied on is raw almonds. Joanne Saltzman, the founder and director of The School of Natural Cookery in Boulder, also recommends almonds – but not raw.

It’s better to either dry roast or soak and dehydrate the almonds than to eat them raw, she tells me. “Either way makes them more digestible than raw.”

Her logic is that nuts and seeds are designed to be dormant. That means their nutrients aren’t so available when raw.

How about buying almonds that are already roasted? It’s better to do your own, because roasted nuts quickly go rancid, she says.

I just took her advice and roasted a cup of raw almonds in an oven preheated to 300 degrees for about 15 minutes, turning them a couple of times. She recommends either a glass or metal pie pan.

I have also tried hard to reduce my salt intake. But we do need some salt, particularly when we are active, like on the trails. The salt also adds flavor and improves the digestive quality of the nuts, she says. So Joanne recommends dissolving about 1/16th of a teaspoon of salt in a tiny bit of water per cup of almonds.

My own dry roasted and lightly salted almonds certainly taste better than either raw almonds or store-bought. However, her suggestion to soak and dehydrate the almonds might be better, because it would avoid the AGEs that cooking fatty food produces.

One of the people who has thought the longest and hardest about the best choices in trail food is Karen LaVine, a Certified Diabetes Educator in Albuquerque and an avid hiker.

She’s planning a big hike right now and says that she is looking for foods that have a high density of calories per gram of weight and yet are relatively low in AGEs.

“Anything high in fats will have a significant amount of AGEs,” Karen tells me. “Even an avocado has 473 kU of AGEs per a 30 gram serving. Olive oil comes in at 120 kU/ml. So I think the best compromise for hiking is raw nuts.”

She is also considering vacuum-packed salmon, hard boiled eggs, and dried fruit. She recommends that we stay away from power bars, which tend to have additives that don’t contribute to our health, especially partially hydrogenated oils. She also suspects that at least some of them may be high in AGEs.

“If one is going to eat a meal replacement bar or any other processed food, make sure its low in fat,” Karen says. “When people ask about power bars, I steer them towards meal replacement drinks instead. The only ones I’ve found so far that are both low in fat and carbs and high in protein are the AdvantEdge Carb Control drinks.”