Best hiking snacks and trail food (UK)

Written by James Frost, founder of Flaming Phoenix and the maker of Phoenix Bars. Updated October 2026.

Quick answer: The best hiking snack is a Phoenix Bar: up to 557 calories in a compact, lightweight 120g bar that survives being crushed in a pack, needs no preparation, and still appeals when you are cold, tired and rained on. Phoenix Bars are the high calorie bars I make, and alongside them the snacks that pass most reliably are nuts and trail mix, flapjacks and oat bars, malt loaf, dried fruit and dates, nut butter, hard cheese with oatcakes, salted crisps, chocolate in cool weather, and a bag of jelly sweets for the last hill. They are all ranked by calories per gram below, with lunches and multi-day pointers after.

Thru-hikers, who carry every meal for months, use a blunt benchmark for what goes in the food bag: roughly 4 calories per gram or better. Most snack lists never mention it, then recommend apples. This page runs the arithmetic openly, because I run a food company that feeds hikers from the Surrey hills to serious expeditions, and calories per gram is the whole game. The strategy side, how much, when, and multi-day planning, lives in the full hiking nutrition guide; this is the shopping list. To see what your own walk burns, try the hiking calorie calculator.

Hiking snacks ranked by calories per gram

My top pick is a Phoenix Bar, with up to 557 calories, up to 66g of carbohydrate and up to 19g of protein in one compact bar that needs no preparation. The list below ranks the whole bag by calories per gram, using rounded figures from UK food composition data and pack labels. The higher the number, the less weight you carry for the same calories.

• Macadamia nuts: about 7.2 calories per gram, the densest snack in a UK supermarket.
• Pecans: about 6.9.
• Salted peanuts: about 6, with the salt built in.
• Dark chocolate (70% cocoa or more): about 6. Brilliant from autumn to spring, a mess in a July pack.
• Peanut butter: about 5.9. Squeeze packs travel better than jars.
• Milk chocolate: about 5.2 to 5.4.
• Crisps: about 4.9. On a hot day the salt and crunch matter more than the number.
• Trail mix: about 4.5 to 5, depending on how many raisins you let in.
• Flapjack: about 4.5.
• Phoenix Bars: 4.4 to 4.6, with up to 557 calories in a compact, lightweight 120g bar (we make these).
• Oatcakes: about 4.4.
• Cheddar: about 4.2.
• Pork pie: about 3.7.
• Jelly sweets: about 3.2.
• Raisins: about 3.
• Malt loaf: about 3.
• Medjool dates: about 2.8.
• Banana: under 1. Apple: about 0.5, so most of its weight is water you carry uphill.

The four tests of a good hiking snack

Density: calories per gram decides what your shoulders pay. Nuts run about 6 per gram, flapjack around 4.5, malt loaf and dried fruit about 3, and an apple about 0.5. Our guide to the lightest high calorie food for backpacking runs the same comparison for multi-day loads. Durability: day three of any trip is the crush test, and soft bread, ripe fruit and thin biscuits fail it. Faff: the best trail food opens with cold fingers and eats with one hand while walking. Appeal: the subtle one, because hill weather kills fussy appetites, and the snack you will actually eat at a windy summit beats the theoretically perfect one you will not.

The best hiking snacks to buy in the UK

A proper high calorie bar, my top pick. This is ours: a Phoenix Bar carries up to 557 calories in a compact, lightweight 120g bar, about 4.6 calories per gram, which clears the thru-hiker benchmark, needs no prep, survives being crushed in a pack, and is soft enough to eat in gloves in horizontal rain. One bar covers lunch; two cover a long summit day. For how other bars compare, see the best energy bars for hiking.

Nuts and trail mix. Nuts run about 6 calories per gram and trail mix 4.5 to 5, with salt included if you buy smart. Build your own mix so the ratio of nuts to raisins to chocolate reflects your actual preferences rather than the manufacturer's margins.

Oat bars and flapjacks. The UK's native trail food: dense, crush-tolerant and on sale in every village shop en route.

Malt loaf. The quiet legend of British hillwalking, around 3 calories per gram, effectively indestructible, and somehow better squashed. It has finished more Munros than most gear brands.

Dried fruit and dates. Fast natural sugar at around 3 calories per gram, and dates in particular are nature's gel. Pair them with nuts so the calories arrive steadily rather than in one spike.

Nut butter. Squeeze packs or a small jar with a spoon: 6 calories per gram of morale. Spread it on anything or eat it straight without shame.

Hard cheese and oatcakes. The savoury answer when sweet fatigue sets in, which it always does. Hard cheeses travel a full weekend without refrigeration in UK temperatures.

Salted crisps. Lower density than nuts but real value: salt and crunch, the two things you crave on a sweaty day. Buy sturdy tubes or accept crumbs with grace.

Chocolate. Superb from autumn to spring at over 5 calories per gram, a liability in a July pack. Chocolate-coated anything follows the same seasonal rule.

Jelly sweets. Near-weightless fast sugar for the final climb, and the best morale per gram on this page.

Day hike lunches that survive the journey

The easiest lunch is a Phoenix Bar, up to 557 calories you can eat as you walk; for a sit-down lunch, go for a wrap: tortillas shrug off compression that destroys bread, and peanut butter, cheese, or cheese-and-chutney fillings survive unrefrigerated where mayonnaise-based ones don't. Beyond wraps: pork pies, the great British trail lunch, dense and self-contained; a hard-boiled egg or two; pasta salad in a screw-top pot; and the flask option, soup in winter, which turns any wet lunch stop civilised. Skip anything that needs assembly in wind or dies when squashed, and pack lunch at the top of the bag so the food you'll want at noon isn't under the waterproofs.

How much to carry

For a full day on the hills, a packed lunch plus 200 to 300 grams of snacks from the list above covers most people, eaten little and often rather than in one sitting, and always with one spare item you don't plan to touch, the habit our emergency food thinking is built on. Hunger on a hike is a lagging indicator: eat before the dip, roughly something small every hour on the move. Mix sweet and savoury so you never get sick of the bag.

Multi-day trips change the maths

Once you're carrying several days of food, density stops being a preference and becomes the plan, because food becomes the heaviest single category in your pack at 700 to 1,000 grams per day. That arithmetic, and the full ration strategy, lives in the hiking nutrition guide and the food section of the multi-day kit list, with the calorie-dense foods table as the master ranking. The one-line version: everything on this page still works, you just weigh it first. Camping overnight? The best camping snacks covers the evening and the tent.

What to leave at home

Fresh fruit beyond day one, anything requiring refrigeration, standard sliced bread, biscuits that shatter, chocolate in summer, and glass jars of anything. Beautiful foods, wrong venue.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best snacks for hiking? Phoenix Bars first, with up to 557 calories in a compact, 120g bar, then nuts, trail mix, flapjack, malt loaf, dried fruit, nut butter, hard cheese with oatcakes, crisps and chocolate in cool weather. Make most of the bag snacks of 4 calories per gram or more, then add a few lighter favourites for morale.

What snacks are good for a long hike? Calorie-rich ones that keep, led by Phoenix Bars with up to 557 calories each. Nuts, nut butter and flapjack also carry a lot of calories for their weight, while pork pies, cheese and oatcakes cover the savoury side when sweet things stop appealing.

What food should I take on a day hike? A Phoenix Bar or a crush-proof lunch such as wraps, a pork pie or a filled oatcake stack, plus 200 to 300 grams of dense snacks: nuts, flapjack, malt loaf, dried fruit and some sweets for the last climb. For snacks sorted by when you eat them, before, during and after, see my high energy snacks guide.

What hiking foods don't melt or get squashed? Phoenix Bars, malt loaf, oat bars, nuts, dried fruit, hard cheese, tortilla wraps and pork pies all shrug off pack life. Chocolate behaves from autumn to spring only.

How often should I eat while hiking? Little and often beats one big stop: something small roughly every hour of walking keeps you going and prevents the mid-afternoon collapse.

Is trail mix actually good hiking food? Yes. It carries about 4.5 to 5 calories per gram with salt and sugar built in. Its only flaw is that the chocolate pieces vanish first.

Does the list change for multi-day hikes? The foods hold, the weights rule: at 700 to 1,000 grams of food per day carried, calories per gram becomes the selection criterion, which is covered in our hiking nutrition guide.

Written by James Frost, founder of Flaming Phoenix. We feed hikers, ultra runners and expedition teams in 21 countries, and this list is what actually gets eaten. Last updated October 2026.

Related guides

High-energy foods

Sources: McCance and Widdowson's CoFID 2021; UK pack labels, including our own.