My bro and two other guys are going to Greenland next year for 4 weeks. They will actually do a crossing...

Anyway, the last two years, they've been to Svalbard for 2 and 3 weeks. They were skiing for 8 hours average each day including breaks.

They carried about 50 kg (110lbs)of gear each (10kg - 22lbs - on the back, 40kg - 88lbs - in the pulk), and my best estimate would be that they burned 7-9 000 k cal a day.

Their problem was that they could never consume that ammount of calories, so needless to say, they all lost a lot of weight. My bro went from 72 kg(158lbs) to 65 kg (143lbs) :d_eek: in three weeks, and a lot of it was lean mass.

This time, I'll put him on a bulking diet along with MaxOT 7 months before they start, so the goal is to get him from 72 kg(158lbs) to 80 kg(176lbs) before he starts(this'll be both lean mass and fat. Minimum 10lbs fat.)

Their diet so far will be:

3 of these: http://www.drytech.no/index.php?&lang=eng&ID=51
2 of these: http://www.drytech.no/index.php?&lang=eng&ID=50

In addition, at least 200 grams chocolate a day.

That's a total of about 3700 k cal in solid food.

They used to consume huge ammounts of soy oil to get the calories up, but that's definitely not a very good solution.

The challenge is: to find something they can eat/drink when they're on the move. Something they either prepare before they start moving in the morning or something that don't need any preparations at all. The latter would be the best.

Below are a few pics to give you an idea of what they went through...

http://develop.dwpg.com/sval/small/Picture%20145sml.jpg

http://develop.dwpg.com/sval/small/Picture%20189sml.jpg

http://develop.dwpg.com/sval/small/Picture%20060sml.jpg

http://develop.dwpg.com/sval/small/Picture%20166sml.jpg

Those pictures are beautiful!

How about nuts? Or like a trail mix kind of thing? Most nuts are calorically dense, and probably not too hard to take with..even a mixture with dried fruits and chocolate might work.

Is it possible that some type of meal replacement shake might work (perhaps one of those ones that comes in a dry formula, like whey does..)? They could melt snow and put it in a water bottle and probably get 500 or so calories out of it...

Beef jerky perhaps? I know its not very high in calories, but it shouldn't be too hard to carry...I thinkt hey even make like tuna packages too...

Maybe like couscous or oats too...

I don' tknow if any of htis will help, but thats what I could think of!
Good luck to them!

...ever tried eating canned food at -30? No? Didn't think so;)

Nuts will definitely be on the menu, and I suggest sodium free roasted cashew nuts because they're pretty high in carbs as well.

Keep the suggestions coming

That place is amazing looking. I spent one year in Iceland and that is amazing as well. Good luck

What type of cooking is possible out there?
Do they make a fire and so forth, or is that not possible due to weather conditions as well....I mean, eating food that is portable and kept uncooked is one thing, but being able to heat food opens up all kinds of possibilities from meats to beans.

Think of foods that are calorically dense...I'm racking my brains for some, and I keep coming on nuts and oats....i'll try to think of more.

Is it possible to do the boil-in-a-bag type thing? Because that adds pasta in to the mix, and tons of other things...

I know canned tuna might be out, but Starkist makes tuna that comes in packages without liquid. Also, what about butter? I know it might sound crazy at first, but if they can cook once or twice a day butter can add a LOT of calories really quick, and it probably wouldn't be so hard to take with..especially if htey could melt it down and then form it in to whatever shape was easiest to bring with...

Dehydrated foods might be a good option as well...

For some reason this topic is so interesting to me!

The only time they can cook is in the morning when they fill their thermoses with water and in the evening. It's impossible to cook anything during their breaks.

I've been thinking about protein bars and dextrose also...but...when it comes to dextrose, I'm afraid that'll result in a insulin peak and by that not very good metabolism...

Ideally, they should get slow carbs every 2-3 hour during the day. Any idea what bikers do when they bike for 8 hours? :confused:

I know in Lance's book he talks about eating candy bars quite a bit, and those like protein bars as well...he eats giant portions of rice and noodles everyday as well.

If they get two meals a day that can be hot they can add hella-carbs to both, and maybe try to do their best with GORP during the breaks. One meal of as much oatmeal as they can stuff down can last a long time, and another of as much pasta as they can stomach at the end of the day might help them stay warm. Also, everything I keep reading about cold-weather hiking says to stay away from caffeine. It suggests decaf tea, gatorade, and things like that but no coffee (makes you colder they say due to quick metabo). I think one thing I read said that bouillon cubes can help to make soups (end of hte day of course...like they could make a noodle soup type thing) but most of those sites seem to be about "cold" weather not "extreme fridgid" weather.

How long are they moving during the day, how long are their breaks, how much can they bring with them? Is it possible to structure their diets in such a way that gives them boosts of complex carbs in the morning and at night, and protein along with a trailmix of dry grains, nuts, and dried fruits and chocolate during the day?

Wow that is amazing!
Envy your brother!
The youngest kid ever to cross Greenland (Norwegian) had a website about this stuff. Maybe there's a link from VG?
A while since I've been in Norway, but in sport shops they sell dry food with lots of kcal. Orange bag? (Maybe that was what you had linked)
My mom's friends crossed Greenland, my neighbors too infact, but I have no idea what they ate. Would be interesting to know!

Just a silly question: Are they gonna use the same face masks as in the picture? (curious about stuff like this)

Wow that is amazing!
Envy your brother!
The youngest kid ever to cross Greenland (Norwegian) had a website about this stuff. Maybe there's a link from VG?
A while since I've been in Norway, but in sport shops they sell dry food with lots of kcal. Orange bag? (Maybe that was what you had linked)
My mom's friends crossed Greenland, my neighbors too infact, but I have no idea what they ate. Would be interesting to know!

Just a silly question: Are they gonna use the same face masks as in the picture? (curious about stuff like this)


Yeah...all their solid food is Drytech. This is truly excellent stuff! Very nutritious and fantastic taste!

In the morning they'll have two of the Drytech breakfasts(shitloads of oatmeal and carbs) and in the evening first a breakfast and then a few hours later a double dinner.

Their problem is what they can eat while on the move, like I said.

I have no idea what they get from their sponsors this time, but they might use the same mask. They're prolly going to set up a website as a part of the promotion of the expedition, so I'll make sure to post link to it when it's up and running;)

Ultra-Calorie-dense foods that can be prepared quickly, easily and in extreme conditions?

hmmm

I guess there aren't any mcdonalds on the route?

:D:D:D

Couscous is relatively light weight, pretty calorie dense and only needs hot water to prepare. On the other hand you can't really eat it during the day.

So the really significant factors are weight:calorie density and versatility of consumption/preparation

secondary factors would be nutritional considerations and taste.

hmmm it's an interesting puzzle.

My recommendation is that they start practicing marksmenship with a gun and bow and arrow. :D Nothing like a several lbs of fresh meat and a couple lbs of fat off a fresh kill made near your camp site to up the calories. :spaz: Since this probably isn't likely and you can't rely on game to be at hand or plentiful (not to mention there are probably regulations in place...)

I believe AST has lately been touting new research that a protein supplement along with carb intake has been proven really beneficial to endurance athletes in preventing muscle (or at least capability) loss. so a quick release protein source to complement their carb heavy breakfast might be a very good idea. Actually AST's MRPs have a mixture of slow release and quick release proteins and tast phenomenal, but they're really expensive, but it might be something to look into.

You can also always make your own energy bars, start experimenting now and try to get the calorie level up to about 500 a serving with fairly heavy density.

Use a base of nut butters, butter, and honey/molasses/maple syrup, with additions of oats/muesli, nuts/dried fruits/chocolates, protein powder, and a small amount of unflavored gelatin softened in water.


soften about a tsp of gelatin in about 1/4 cup of water.
try 2 cups of a nut butter with a half cup of butter and about a cup of the honey/molasses/maple syrup melt these together over low heat. incorporate the gelatin water. remove from heat and fold in about 1-2 cups of oats and as much protein powder as you can incorporate so that it is really thick and dry, but not powdery. Fold in extras or press them into the top after spreading in the baking pan. Press into a baking pan and divide into reasonably sized servings after it's cooled and set about 2 hours. If you wanted you could probably even go in for some high GI carbs by mixing in High Fructose corn syrup to spike the calories.

I ran the numbers through my spreadsheet and got the following:
2 cups natural peanut butter - 2880
2 cup oats - 600
1 cup honey - 960
1/2 cup butter - 800
12 ozs all the way unflavored whey protein isolate - 1230
total of 6470
and that's without extras like nuts, fruits and chocolates.
Divide into 12 servings to get:
539.2calories 20.0 grams fat 8.0 grams sat fat 40.2 grams carbs 5.3 grams fiber 24.3 grams sugar 37.3 grams protein
per serving.

could be prepared before the trip will keep well, will pack small and are pretty dense in calories. and those are conservative estimates on the protein powder, there's substantially more butter in that recipe than I would use for myself, so you could probably get in another 2-4 ozs of protein powder, though you'll have to experiment to find out.




Look at ingredient lists of commercial candy bars and energy bars for ideas, but remember they're trying to keep calorie count down, and you're wanting to probably double what they have.

A few of my mates are really in to long distance mtb'g and they have super-calorie packed bars to eat. I could find out who makes them, but they might only distro in the uk...

EDIT: Can't you just buy some army mrps? Now that I think about, outdoor survival stores sell mrps as well...

a quick recepie i sometimes maike when i want to have my oats on-the-go is:

3 eggwhites
then mix oats (or even better a form of granola or muesli) with the eggwhites until it is really thick. then add a decent amount of honey for calories (i dont do this, but you probably should for the calories)

you can probably evn replace some of the oats and put some proteinpowder in there instead.

then take the mixture and form it into balls or bars or w/e you want..

now put it in a pre-heated oven at 150 - 200 degrees Celsius or 300-400 degrees Fahrenheit

then let em sit in the oven for a few minutes (10-15 minutes) then take one peice out and check if its a little hard. its perfect when the outer oats around the bottom are browned and almost burnt/crispy.

now let it cool off, and try to not eat them all before you go :lol:

Here's an article on high-altitude eating, which is probably applicable to the situation you describe.

http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/0319.htm

Keeping the body loaded with vitamins will help too. Check out the elite athlete multivitimain from cooper clinic http://www.coopercomplete.com/

Also have them check out energy gels for in-motion energy.

Those pictures are rather breathtaking. My favourite is the second because on the top you've got unadulterated beauty, and the bottom half shows the sheer brutality of nature at the same time.

Bulk him up and by the end he'll look pretty ripped :) In terms of calories, professional cyclists burn around 10k/day. They lose weight over a long competition because they simply can't ingest enough calories, but maybe you could get some tips from a cyclict site on how to maximize the consumption of clean calories.

I've always wondered hy Iceland is where people live, and Greenland is a frozen wasteland. It's kind of how you park in a driveway and drive in a parkway!

I ran across this article at the weston price foundation website which Jeremy linked to in another thread. I thought the information at the bottom is particularly salient, since peoples that live in this environment consider dried salmon roe a sacred food. I think this might be a very good thing to consider for their journey:

The business of wild salmon (http://www.westonaprice.org/farming/wildsalmon.html)

Dried or fermented fish roe—called bottargo in Italian—is a highly nutrient-dense storage food. Two cultures visited by Dr. Price considered dried fish roe a sacred food—the Eskimos in Alaska and the Indians of the Andes Mountains in Peru.

Dried salmon roe is a beautiful deep red, smells of the oceans and has a gluey-sticky texture. It can be sliced and mixed with grain dishes, chopped up and added to fish soups and sauces, or made into a paste and served on crackers or toast.

To make a delicious spread, place 4 ounces dried salmon roe (coarsely chopped), 1-2 ounces sun dried tomatoes, 1 tablespoon South River barley miso and 1/4 cup olive oil in a food processor. Process until smooth and season with a little lemon juice, garlic or cayenne pepper.