Can everclear be used to power a camping stove? that would give it dual usage.
I am sure **Broomstick **is right and you can eat oils straight.
I wonder what the most dense forms of protein are. I would assume just a whey protein powder has the most protein per gram (since its almost pure protein). Jerky, according to google has about 400 calories and 33g protein per 100g of weight. Whey protein powder has about 90g of protein per 100g of weight. But I don’t know if hikers carry a ziploc bag full of whey protein they can mix into their water on hikes. I’m sure a few do.
Yes, called a alcohol stove - many thru hikers use them and many make their own, and some chose to use Everclear as fuel because of fear that denatured alcohol vapors may be unhealthy when burned. However most use denatured or HEET gas antifreeze in the yellow bottle (methanol) due to cost and obtainability along the trail.
I don’t have any numbers, but I knew a serious hiker (multiple AT completions) who swore by red potatoes. He’d eat them like apples, raw, while walking.
I’ve looked into this issue for my own hiking trips. Lots of backpackers still emphasize fatty foods on the theory that it has the most calories per ounce. I think that’s a mistake, unless you’re already painfully thin.
There is, unfortunately, a limit to how fast your muscles can burn ordinary fats (containing long-chain fatty acids). If you exercise at low to medium-low intensity (resting to sauntering), your muscles can get almost all of their energy from fat. As intensity rises, you need to add more and more carbs into the mix. Decades ago, it was believed the limiting factor in fat metabolism was how fast fats can be released into the bloodstream (both from the digestive system and body fat storage). However, research in the last 15 or 20 years has proven that after the first 1 or 2 hours of exercise, the limit is set by the presence of membrane transport proteins. (During the first 1 or 2 hours, the muscle cells can burn intramuscular fatty acids that are already inside the muscle cell.) One type of protein moves fat from the blood to the muscle cell’s cytoplasm, and two more move it from the cytoplasm into the mitochondria where it needs to go if it’s going to get burned. If you have a reasonable amount of stored body fat, eating extra (ordinary) fat before and during exercise isn’t going to help much. Your body fat stores already provide as much (ordinary) fat fuel as your muscles can handle.
Medium-chain fatty acids, on the other hand, can diffuse across membranes without help from the transport proteins. You can buy refined nearly 100% pure MCFA oil, but it’s expensive. Natural coconut oil is the only really good natural source of MCFAs, containing about 50% long-chain and 50% medium-chain. I find that if I mix it with sugar and vanilla, or cook it into a sort of fudge with sugar and cocoa powder, it provides a reasonably tasty mixture of carbs and easy-to-burn fats.
There is some tantalizing evidence–but not proof–that over the long term, changes in diet (switching to a high-fat diet even when not exercising) and exercise habits (long-duration bouts of aerobic exercise) can increase the number of transport proteins. That would allow your muscles to burn more fat at high intensity, but it probably takes on the order of weeks or months to have a significant effect.
In practice those thru hikers who did high carb, low protein/fat (Raman and hunnybuns) were the ones with the greatest ‘hiker funk’ (smell) and also appeared to be wasting away. I believe the lack of protein was the the factor in this .
I have a friend who does ultra marathons. Like the Spartathlon, a 246km race. He avoids carbs completely, trying to stay in a constant state of ketosis so that his body can burn fat efficiently during the races.
The OP doesn’t state how long this scenario is expected to last. If it’s 1-3 days, then macadamia nuts are probably the best choice. Functionally, pounding them into a mash in advance would make it more convenient both to pack and to eat them. You could put them in small ziplock bags and just bite a hole in the corner at mealtime. Carry a larger bag to hold the dirties until you can dispose of them.
If i were in this situation, and I knew water would be available along the way, I might consider powdered baby formula. Anything more than two days without vitamins and I lose energy and perspective. I can’t think of any food as light and complete. There are meal replacements meant for adults that would taste better, but they are not as nutrition-dense. Soylent used to come in a powdered form, so that might work, perhaps in combination with coconut oil.
If you pourel the oil over lettuce and chew well, you increase its surface area, making it more available to gut juices to break down. I think it’s true that if you drink a lot of oil, especially if it’s more total oil than your system is used to, it may pass through you, resulting in soft greasy stool that is hard to retain.
I wouldn’t describe the resulting condition as an illness, or “making you sick”, but it would be unpleasant, and you wouldn’t be absorbing all the calories.
But I think that if you build up to eating more fat your digestive system adapts, having more bile handy, for example. And unless you are currently on a very low fat diet, or have other issues, it’s perfectly safe to drink small amounts of oil just as oil, and that’s unlikely to give you any problems. (And if it does, they will be a minor inconvenience. Unless you have underlying health issues that interfere with digesting fat.)
I’m pretty sure I could drink a quarter cup of olive oil in the morning with no adverse digestive effects. I don’t think I could get all my calories for a week without from olive oil without getting the runs.
Cleansing the body isn’t a thing and people on the Med aren’t in the record book for longevity in particular, so really they’re just people who drink oil for no reason.
Mediterranean people have decent life expectancies as compared to Americans. It’s unlikely to be “the magic of the Mediterranean diet”, as Finns and Japanese and Canadians do, too. But check out this graphic:
In “world development indicators”, select health, and then life expectancy. In “compare by” select some countries, such as Spain, Italy, US, Finland, Canada, … If you do that, an option to compare for just males or just females should pop up.
I know this isn’t a general experience, but I don’t eat nuts or trail mix while on the trail, because every now and then I inhale one. It’s not a problem I have on sidewalks, but the trails I (used to) walk were a bit rougher, required more concentration and more effort, and it didn’t work for me.
I’m pretty sure I can survive 72 hours with no food, if I have shelter and water. I won’t be happy, but I’m not going to die of starvation in three days.
Adding it to lettuce (aka “Mother Nature’s green paper”) doesn’t change it chemically.