It’s really important that you eat sufficient food to give you the energy to complete your expedition. Its the one time you can ignore calories because you will burn them off during the expedition.
Remember one of your 20 expedition conditions is that you are seen to cook a substantial meal each day. The DofE have provided a meal planner to help you. Please note you don’t need a supper / tea for the last day.
Your DofE diet should be compact and easy to carry. It needs to be high in slow-release carbs which provide energy and will help you throughout your expedition.
We strongly advise boil in the complete bag meals as they are quick and easy to cook, save time, can be eaten straight out of the bag with no washing up, are nutritious, and in an emergency (check the package) most can be eaten cold. Sounds yuck but one day you may have to. You can also use the water to make a hot drink.
This also helps as they will have to share a stove and two bags for two different people can be cooked together.
There are lots of different brands and menus, the pictures below are just examples of what you might consider using:
You should be able to find vegetarian and halal options.
In the past we have used the following suppliers but there are plenty of others if you search for them on google, amazon, etc:
Don’t forget to also bring trail rations (chocolate, nuts, cereal bars, boiled sweets) to munch on the way and coffee, tea, hot chocolate etc. to make a hot drink. Bring milk powder not liquid milk.
We discourage dehydrated meals as they often take longer to cook, you may have to wash up, and if not properly re-hydrated can cause you all sorts of problems. Leaders have seen and experienced the results, do I need to say anymore?
You also don’t want meals you have to prepare and cook in a pan. Its messy, time consuming, will need repeated pans of water to wash up in, and means you cant easily share a stove.
On expeditions at Pegasus we have banned energy drinks. Again this is from experience of seeing expedition team members overdose on them and then crash out when the initial rush has gone. Think about it, they create an in-balance in your metabolism to give you the initial rush which quickly subsides leaving an energy low and possible dehydration, is that what you really want when you are humping a rucksack up a hillside?
Pegasus Explorer Scouts 