The outdoor camping meal retail category encompasses a range of products designed to provide convenient and nourishing food options for outdoor enthusiasts. These meals offer consumers lightweight, shelf stable, and quick meal options when a regular meal is impossible or impractical. Typically, these meals are made from ingredients that are dehydrated (air dried/baked) or freeze dried. There are major differences in each type of product.
Dehydrated
Dehydrated meals have been preserved by air drying or baking moisture from their ingredients through the evaporation process. This process removes much of the nutrient quality and leaves the individual ingredients hard and rigid. You can easily tell if an ingredient has been dehydrated just by its appearance. In nearly every instance the ingredient has lost much of its volume and appears to be crinkled up. When you bite into a dehydrated ingredient typically it is very hard and flavorless. The negatives with dehydrated meals are multi-faceted. First, because the meal has literally been dried out by heat / evaporation much of the nutrients have been dried out as well. Second, because of how hard the ingredients are now is it is much more difficult to have the meal to rehydrate well or quickly. Finally, because the DNA structure of the dehydrated meal has been damaged the taste profile has been greatly altered leaving the product somewhat tasteless.
Freeze Dried
Freeze drying by contrast preserves ingredients through a natural process called sublimation. This natural process which is replicated in a vacuum chamber removes moisture by converting and removing an ingredients moisture into a vapor thereby leaving its DNA structure unchanged. The freeze-drying process leaves food nutrients virtually unchanged retaining 97% of their nutrient values. Additionally, the process leaves the ingredients flavor profiles intact and, in many cases, intensifies an ingredients flavor. Shape and volume are also left unchanged. Because nearly all the moisture has been removed the decomposition process has been halted leaving a freeze-dried product completely shelf stable. This means there is no need for refrigeration and the shelf life can be 20 plus years if stored properly.
The National Institute of Health (NIH) conducted a study comparing various food preservation methods. This study can be found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7602416/ . The results of this study show that freeze drying is far superior to air drying and other methods of preservation and keep nutrient potency intact (Figure 1.). Please see the graph below taken from the report showing Vitamin C and Beta-carotene retention comparisons.
Examples of REV Dried, Freeze-Dried, and dehydrated (air dried)
Top Row – Rev Dried
Middle Row – Freeze Dried
Bottom Row – Dehydrated
You can clearly see that freeze drying leaves food virtually unchanged while the results of dehydration are less than optimal. For you nerds out there, REV Drying is fairly new, non-standard, and super expensive food preservation method that uses vacuum and microwave technology.
Hybrids
Many outdoor meals are a hybrid of dehydrated and freeze-dried ingredients. Meaning they contain some freeze-dried ingredients while using cheaper dehydrated products as fillers. While potentially less expensive these products are inferior to 100% freeze dried products on the basis of nutrition, taste and shelf life.
In the end there are a lot of outdoor meal options out there. For peace of mind and to get the best on trail experience choose only those products that are 100% freeze dried. Additionally, for those of you that are not vegan or vegetarian you should only use products that contain real USDA meat and that have a USDA inspected stamp. Stay safe out there be sure to pack out what you pack in…
FOUNDATION Outdoors, Staff Writer – Sir Scott #317
