Choose hiking trail food by calories: 4 picks1.38–5.00kcal per gram

If you choose hiking trail food by calories per weight, my pick is the CalorieMate Block. 4 sticks are 80g and 400kcal, 5.00kcal per gram, the highest of the 5 I compared. For people who want to count in small portions, I picked Imuraya's Sports Yokan at 116kcal a stick.

Hiking trail food falls into 4 types by calories per gram

To carry the same 500kcal, a jelly drink is 361g and CalorieMate is 100g. The difference is 261g. A trail food's weight is set less by the amount of calories than by the share of water and fat inside.

In this article, I split the 5 products with a nutrition label on the maker's official page into 4 types, jelly, yokan, solid and caffeinated, and picked one for each type.

How I chose

The first thing I looked at was calories per gram (energy ÷ weight). The 5 ranged from 1.38 to 5.00kcal, a 3.6x spread, so I first split the types by this number. Next I checked salt equivalent and caffeine amount against the official labels, and last, for products with an official price, I worked out the price per 100kcal.

• On days you want a light load, make a solid type at 4.9kcal or more per gram your main food
• For people who want to count in small portions, the yokan type at 40g and 116kcal a stick
• Choose a caffeinated one only if the official page states how many mg it has per piece

Quick table of calories for the 5 trail foods

Between the top 2 and the bottom 1, the weight you carry differs by 3.6 times. Once you've decided how much you'll eat on the mountain, this is the column to look at next.

My solid-type pick, CalorieMate Block | 5.00kcal per gram

I'll say this with some heat. 4 sticks are 80g and 400kcal, and each stick is exactly 100kcal, so counting what's left on the mountain needs no math. Fat is 22.4g, and times 9kcal that's about 202kcal. Fat carries half the calories.

Here's the weak spot. Salt equivalent is 0.81g for 4 sticks, the highest of the five. The official allergen label lists egg, milk, wheat, soy and almond. It suits the lead role on days you put lightness first.

Runner-up: Kameda Kaki-no-Tane Trail Mix

491kcal per 100g, a close 0.09kcal per gram from CalorieMate. Each individually wrapped pack is 93kcal, and you can open one at a time while walking. What to watch is how many ingredients it has: the official allergen label lists 9 items, wheat, egg, milk, almond, cashew, soy, chicken, banana and pork. It also says products containing shrimp and peanuts are made in the same factory.

My yokan-type pick, Imuraya Sports Yokan Azuki | 116kcal a stick

116kcal in a 40g stick, with 0.13g salt equivalent. A box of 5 is ¥648 at the Imuraya web shop, so it's ¥111.7 per 100kcal. The official allergen label says it uses none of the specified ingredients or those that follow them.

Here's the weak spot. 2.90kcal per gram is a little under 60% of the solid type, and for 500kcal it weighs 72g more. It suits people who want to count how many sticks they've eaten.

My jelly-type pick, Aminovital Perfect Energy | 180kcal in 130g

One pouch has 41g of carbohydrate, 5.0g of protein and 0g of fat. It's a form you can drink without chewing, and at 0.04g, salt equivalent is the lowest of the five.

Here's the weak spot. Subtract carbohydrate and protein from 130g and about 84g is left. A little over 60% of the weight carries no calories, and it stays at 1.38kcal per gram. It's a type you don't make the lead, but add by a set count of 1–2 pouches.

My caffeinated pick, Sports Yokan Coffee | 40mg a stick

I chose this for one reason. The official page gives 40mg of caffeine per stick as a number. The weight and calories, 40g and 115kcal, are nearly the same as the Azuki, so you can swap it in without changing your count of how many to carry.

A box of 5 is ¥702, ¥122.1 per 100kcal. That's ¥10.8 more per stick than the Azuki (702 ÷ 5 − 648 ÷ 5). Salt equivalent had two listings on the official pages, 0.13g and 0.14g.

Comparing the salt in trail food

For price, I compared the two Imuraya products whose official pages give one, per 100kcal: ¥111.7 for the Azuki and ¥122.1 for the Coffee. For the others too, if you divide the shop price by the calories and multiply by 100, you can line them up on the same yardstick.

Why nuts have high calories for their weight

The Consumer Affairs Agency's material sets the factors for calculating energy at 4kcal per 1g of protein, 9kcal per 1g of fat and 4kcal per 1g of carbohydrate. By that, fat carries 2.25 times as much as carbohydrate for the same weight.

In the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's food composition database, almonds (roasted, unsalted) are 608kcal per 100g, with 54.1g of fat and 1.8g of water. With lots of fat and little water, that's 6.08kcal per gram. Conversely, jelly with a lot of water goes down per gram.

Read the public bodies' cautions on caffeine amounts first

The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's Q&A says an acceptable daily intake of caffeine has not been set, in Japan or internationally, because individual differences are large and so on. In the table on the same page, coffee (brewed) is 60mg per 100mL, so a 40mg stick is about 67mL of coffee (40 ÷ 60 × 100).

That Q&A also urges people not to drink several caffeine-rich drinks a day. On days you also drink coffee or tea in the mountains, choose products that state the amount so you can count the total.

For dinner and breakfast at the campsite, I decided them from the water amount in the tent-camping meals article.

Who is it for?

This suits people on long mountain trips who want to add calories little by little as they walk. For a short day hike, rice balls or bread are enough.

Children, pregnant women, breastfeeding women and people sensitive to caffeine should choose the Azuki rather than the caffeinated one. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's Q&A urges these people to limit drinks that are high in caffeine.

FAQ

How many kcal of trail food should I carry?

A 2020 handout from the National Mountaineering Training Center's safe mountaineering seminar gives a formula for working out consumption rather than a single number. The formula is (body weight + weight of pack, clothes and so on) × (1.8 × hours + 0.3 × horizontal distance + 10.0 × climbing distance + 0.6 × descending distance), with time in h and distance in km.

Which trail food has the most calories per gram?

Of the 5 I compared, the CalorieMate Block at 5.00kcal and Kameda's Kaki-no-Tane Trail Mix at 4.91kcal. Almonds (roasted, unsalted) in the food composition database are 6.08kcal, higher than these.

How many mg of caffeine a day is the limit?

According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's Q&A, no acceptable daily intake has been set, in Japan or internationally. The same page notes that Health Canada gives up to 400mg a day for healthy adults.

Gear in this article

Ad · Images: Rakuten Ichiba

CalorieMate Block Chocolate, 4 sticks (for bulk boxes, check the count)Kameda Kaki-no-Tane Trail Mix 75g (for bulk packs, check the number of bags)Imuraya Sports Yokan Azuki (from a box of 5 sticks of 40g)Aminovital Perfect Energy 130g (for packs of 6 and so on, check the count)Imuraya Sports Yokan Coffee (from a box of 5 sticks of 40g)

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