• Finding restaurants with nutrition-based meals, especially when on a budget or in poor countries, can be difficult.
• It’s easy to grab a sugar coated snack or low cost fast food instead of fresh produce when on the move.
• In certain climates food perishes quickly.
• When visiting remote areas there are logistical restraints on getting the food from the shops to the camp.

Your health can be at risk if these situations aren’t addressed properly. For most people, taking a vacation or going on an expedition is a well planned and well financed investment, and the last thing you need is to come down with an illness or intestinal cramps.

For people who are sticking to a ‘well worn’ adventure travel route it is simply a matter of self-discipline and common sense with regards to keeping yourself healthy.  However the further in the wilderness you go the harder it is to eat healthily. Lets look at the far end of the expedition food/logistics dilemma:

• Fresh food perishes quickly and is damaged easily whilst you are on the move or getting to the base camp for your expedition.  So a 2 month expedition will run out of fresh produce by day three!
• Tins are heavy and when empty need carrying back out with you.
• Many liquid forms of goodness, such as milk (and even egg) can be purchased as a powder – but is lacking the original nutritional qualities and if it gets wet it becomes useless.
• Whatever is claimed to last longer or doesn’t need refrigeration is highly processed, meaning again that the difference between it and its natural counterpart is massive (there are a few small exceptions such as tuna).
• Many food containers are glass, which is trouble to transport and then has to be brought out.

Above we looked at what you eat… now let’s look at how much.  Have you ever sat down and made a pile on the floor in front of you for a week of ‘transportable’ food with suitable containers?  Now let’s assume you are going into an area for some research and need to be there for a month.  Times the pile by 4.  How many people are in your team? Now times the pile by the number of people in your team – add 10% for dramas, breakages, delays etc, and you are now faced with quite a large heap. Never underestimate the logistics involved in moving your food.  In over three quarters of expedition locations water will be readily available (with some purification obviously), you only need one tent per trip, one set of boots etc,  but food is a ‘constant factor’.

Below is an old photo of ours from an expedition in Belize, 2 months, 20 people… this pile was half way though the trip!  Notice how it is raised off the floor away from the bugs and the dirt.

It goes without saying to take out of the jungle/mountains/desert all your waste you can’t burn (by burn we mean paper!).

Some good advice for a longer term project or expedition – using locals on your project is a must, not only for culture, language assistance, help with the geography/ecology, but they know they nearest villages and probably the people in them.  When in Belize, we had our Mayan helpers return, after time off to visit their families, with bags of fresh fruit and vegetables (not to mention one sneeky chap who paid a few dollars for a bottle of rum!).

Give the link a click to read some more expedition diet advice?