Caving Snacks

Bread Rolls (filling of your choice) wrapped in tin foil tend to deal pretty well with being stuffed in a drum and smashed around.

I was also presented with scones, jam, and clotted cream (and tea!) complete with picnic blanket whilst halfway through a trip in the peaks. I think that requires more pre-planning than I’m willing to commit though.
 

The Old Ruminator

Well-known member
Nearly a whole three page post with no images. I see fewer photos here than any other forums I visit. We have proper lunch breaks. Hot coffee, sandwiches of any sort and sometimes home made cake. A picnic in fact.

 

Pitlamp

Well-known member
I've taken stainless steel flasks of hot tea through long sumps in the past. As long as they're brim full they'll survive any depth. There's something quite luxurious about floating in some airbell with a steaming brew in hand. Just remember to refill completely with water before the return swim or they will collapse under pressure.
 

Jenny P

Active member
I do recall once coming across someone on a Lancaster/Easegill through trip who was carrying a tin of sardines in the top pocket of his boilersuit. (The word "boilersuit" is a gave-away as to the date of this episode.) I did wonder what he was going to do with the tin afterwards, though he assured me he wasn't going to leave it down the cave, so I imagined him licking the tin clean before popping it back in his pocket after he'd scoffed the sardines.
 
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Jenny P

Active member
I always used to carry Kendal Mint Cake (the brown variety) when walking but went off the idea when I was caught in a rainstorm while having an open packet of the stuff in the top pocket of my old anorak. The anorak turned out not to be waterproof after all and thereafter, whenever it got damp there was an overwhelming odour of peppermint following me when I went walking.
 

caving_fox

Active member
Where the hell do you find dark chocolate Bountys now? I thought they'd been banned or something :(
Local corner shops do sometimes have them, havent' seen them in a supermarket for some time. My brother sends me a whole box of them as a birthday present ordered online somehow, so I haven't had to look for them in a shop in quite a while!
 

pwhole

Well-known member
It seems BM Bargains do them, and there's one not far away from me, or I'll order a boxfull online. They've recently taken the milk variety out of their Celebrations tins as apparently no-one liked them, but it's not surprising as they're so sickly. The dark chocolate balances that perfectly. Not that I ever take any food or drink underground - can't be arsed, and I never get hungry anyway. Just had a massive bacon sarnie and a big mug of tea this morning before the trip and was fine.
 

BikinGlynn

Member
Pizza Time - Sureal experience watching the snow fall down Cyfty shaft while eating this!
20.jpg
 

Pony

Active member
Was on a trip where a newbie had brought a banana along.. It was suggested, to save weight, to peel it and the best place to carry it was in the armpit of their wetsuit. Strictly speaking, you could eaj it after a couple of hours caving, but you really wouldn't want to.
 

PeteHall

Moderator
Was on a trip where a newbie had brought a banana along.. It was suggested, to save weight, to peel it and the best place to carry it was in the armpit of their wetsuit. Strictly speaking, you could eaj it after a couple of hours caving, but you really wouldn't want to.
Sounds a pretty tough trip for a newbie, and a pretty mean prank from whoever provided the advice!

However, you have brought back the memory of a university fresher, on her first trip, producing a perfectly undamaged banana from her oversuit at the end of Mistral! How she did it remains a mystery.
 
Update on the pizza: It was a fantastic idea! Managed to fit an entire one in my helmet on both Saturday and Sunday and besides being great food, it also provided some comedic relief to the trips. A friend tried an entire Napoli salami in their oversuit pocket and I could definitely be convinced to take one along next time as well.
 

Loki

Active member
I took a couple of stubbies and a tin of beans to camp 1 in the Berger. I also find one of those shrink wrapped Spanish tortillas is good tucker on long trips but you need some mates to help you got through it in one sitting.
 
Update on the pizza: It was a fantastic idea! Managed to fit an entire one in my helmet on both Saturday and Sunday and besides being great food, it also provided some comedic relief to the trips. A friend tried an entire Napoli salami in their oversuit pocket and I could definitely be convinced to take one along next time as well.
Will confirm that I found the pizza very funny. Anyway, my favourite non-sweet caving snacks are packs of olives, dried mango and apricots (babyhagrid got that idea from me feeding him some mid-crawl), and cheesy flatbread in tiny drybag- perfectly pocket sized. Iced coffee has also been a big success, I just hung the bottle off a shoelace and squished it under an arm and if you make it super milky (and sugary but that may defeat the point here) it makes for great sustenance
 

Graigwen

Active member
These are all rather frugal suggestions.

Aberystwyth CC have the right idea with a stout wicker hamper containing baguettes, a range of cheeses and cheeseboard, olives and other choice comestibles; washed down with champagne and fine wines and fresh fruit juice.

Here is a photo from a 2016 trip down Ystrad Einion Mine.
Aber cave snacks.jpg
 

Pitlamp

Well-known member
What's your threshold for too much sugar PL? I suppose if you made them yourself it would be a little different but I would imagine most store bought flapjacks would be generously sugared.

Sorry - only just noticed this. I spotted from a separate post that you're vegetarian, so you probably already know a lot about nutrition. What follows isn't intended to be patronising! But if you're not familiar with this it may help, so here goes.

Basic carbohydrate chemistry; think of carbohydrates as a number of carbon rings bonded together. The simplest consist of a single carbon ring and are called monosaccharides, such as glucose. Two carbon rings bonded together are called disaccharides (such as sucrose - common table sugar). Starch is an example of a polysaccharide, with about 1000 carbon rings bonded into a far bigger molecule.

Obviously, the time taken for your gut to digest carbohygrates depends on the size of the molecule; starches take far longer for enzymes to pull to bits than small molecular size sugars. Ultimately everything is broken down into glucose, which is very soluble and easily absorbed into your bloodstream.

This is where the problem lies; if you east a lot of table sugar (which is what KMC is essentially made of) its two carbon rings are quickly split into glucose molecules, which are then quickly absorbed and your blood glucose level skyrockets. This is VERY bad for your body in a great many ways - if you've ever seen a hyperglycaemic diabetic you'll know exactly what I mean.

In healthy people a hormone called insulin is rapidly secreted by the pancreas in response to the fast rising blood glucose concentration. Insulin has the effect of removing glucose from the blood (and storing it as a polysaccharide galled glycogen, e.g. in the liver, where it's stored for later release when needed).

Bear with me; we're almost there . . . . (!)

A very fast blood glucose spike can result in an oversecretion of insulin, which then lowers blood glucose level BELOW what it should be. So eating a load of simple sugars can actually result in a LOWER blood sugar level than beforehand! The result is you get a brief lift but then you quickly feel like you've hardly any energy.

Now to your question; counterintuitively, gobbling down a load of KMC can result in you feeling tired. Munching a flapjack (which consists mainly of starchy oats, which take time to digest, slowing down the release of glucose) will smooth out the energy delivery and not cause you to oversecrete insulin. This keeps your blood sugar level nearer to what it should be to provide the optimum amount of energy for muscle cell respiration. The sugar in the flapjack gives you a quick lift but it's lower proportion in the recipe is less likely to cause a massive sugar spike which would lead to the problem described above.

The one caveat I would give is nibbling tiny amounts of KMC regularly (rather than gluttoning down whole bars when you suddenly feel hungy) is probably OK.

This is why I'd recommend foods with a higher starch content and lower sugar content as caving snacks.

Does that help?
 

BikinGlynn

Member
Update on the pizza: It was a fantastic idea! Managed to fit an entire one in my helmet on both Saturday and Sunday and besides being great food, it also provided some comedic relief to the trips. A friend tried an entire Napoli salami in their oversuit pocket and I could definitely be convinced to take one along next time as well.

I havent advanced to the helmet carry yet mine was in a small box that did get a bit of Ocre ingress!
 

BikinGlynn

Member
These are all rather frugal suggestions.

Aberystwyth CC have the right idea with a stout wicker hamper containing baguettes, a range of cheeses and cheeseboard, olives and other choice comestibles; washed down with champagne and fine wines and fresh fruit juice.

Here is a photo from a 2016 trip down Ystrad Einion Mine.

Dont think u would of got far with a wicker hamper where we were lol
 

mikem

Well-known member
Whilst kayaking in Greenland our guides cooked frozen pizza in their frying pans (we had just stopped at one of the few supermarkets)
 
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