The FDA recommends a 2000 calorie diet for the average American consumer. This amount reflects a healthy diet wherein energy input is well-balanced with energy output on a given day. However, most people don't precisely follow this recommendation...
When you are riding your bike 8 hours a day, everyday, your body expends energy at an alarmingly high rate. During the early days of the trip, our bodies had not quite adjusted to the drastic increase of activity and subsequently our stomachs constantly needed filling. I was hungry and searching my bags for food every two hours, sometimes every hour on really hot and strenuous days. We ate and ate and never even considered what we put into our systems. "If it tasted like food, it probably was food" was the motto. We figured that whatever fat, carbs or sugar we consumed would likely be used up within the next 3 hours or so. And with that mentally we ate at leisure and redefined the food pyramid (although, be forewarned, we are in no way advocating this diet to be the way to stay away from heart disease or diabetes. In fact, following this diet on a day-to-day basis, without the weighty amount of exercise and thereby high rate of metabolism, will likely incur in the aforementioned medical conditions. Eat smart!)
Vegetable and Fruits: 1 serving. This often came in the form of a daily banana, peach, or apple and an infrequent side salad. In rural areas it was hard to locate anything edible that originated from trees or underground.
Meat and Poultry: 0-2 serving. During first half of the trip we frequently stopped at dinners and had ourselves a burger of some sort-the only meat containing food to be found on the menu. Toward the latter part of the trip we did more camp stove cooking and therefore became more vegetarian friendly. We had lots of canned chili beans. Canned vegetables. And we tried to mix it up with a surprise can of X once in a while.
Dairy: 4-6 servings. Solely in the form of ice cream, which also accounted for a good chunk of our daily fat and sugar intake. Anything perishable is a no-go on an extended bike trip during the hot summer days of the year.
Sweets: 8 servings a day. This was a mix of stuff with some stats below...
- peanut butter: total count = 1jar for Bryan, 5 jars for me, 10 jars for Ryan (at one point, he had a jar every other day...) that's protein right there!
- nutella: a jar for myself every 4 days (chocolate on the go!), 4 jars total (nutella is hard to come by, which may be a good thing because that number would have skyrocketed otherwise)
- ice cream: we kept a tally in the beginning but quickly lost count after week 1.
- sour candy: a bag every so often. Mostly Bryan's day snack.
- soda: I usually never drink soda, but probably had one drink every other day. Frequently it was the only cold drink option available.
- pie: We came across some amazing pie shops and made an effort to have a daily dessert. There is always room for dessert.
Grain: 10-14 servings
- tortilla/bread: used excellently with the above mentioned nutella and/or peanut butter (food suggestion: if you put nutella on tortilla it resembles a chocolate crepe)
- oatmeal: excellent breakfast, just add some trail mix and bannana to it
- trail mix: complements just about anything
And then there were Cliff bars-wonderful pocket sized meals with all the essential nutrients to keep us going in times of dire need.
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| If there were choices other than burgers, we would go for it. This place was an excellent mexican restaurant somewhere in Kansas. |
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| During the rare opportunity of having an oven and kitchen at our disposal, we made a gigantic homemade cookie with coconut, pineapple ice-cream topping. The cookie was gone 15 min later. |
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| Visiting a crepe shop in Denver to have some real nutella and crepe for a change. Having previously worked in a crepe shop, I intently observed chef Logan as he performed excellent twirling technique in preparing the crepe. |
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| Our last day with Bryan and a must visit to Ben and Jerrys. |
