Liquid Lunch

The overall meal plan for the trip is 6000 calories per rower per day. This consists of a meal plan built around 5 meals of 800 calories. Read more about my meal plan, here.

But that's only 4000 calories. We still need to consume an additional 2000 calories daily. 

A previous ocean rower once told me that he was tired of chewing with the required amount of food that you must take in. Taking that advice and knowing that we can find liquids (+ powder) to supplement a good portion of calories is the plan. 

At the moment I believe I can find about 1000 calories in liquid snacks. This would leave 1000 calories to be found though snack bars but let's see how far we can get with liquids. 

Here's a plan to have 5 servings a day of liquid snack over the entire trip. 

Some basic math gives us the above chart and breaks it down into the below calorie requirement. 

1000 calories / 5 servings = 200 calories per serving 

Why 5 servings? I did the math a few times with 4 servings and 6 servings as guesses and 200 calories seems about right for what i can find food wise. 

From this chart we can also see that 225 servings will be needed to make the trip for 45 days. 

In the below picture I tried out a number of different scenarios to see what options might exist for using expensive powders vs. less expensive powders then changing the number and frequency of servings to offset cost. This model didn't work out as well as I had hoped. Also it would complex to implement while at sea. 

The above picture while too complex for me, might work for others. However collapsing Liquid B and Liquid C into a single item might give variety (2 options vs. 1) . 

My current thinking is to use 2 options. Switching to a view of the pricing and servings can inform us on what I've found for filling the two spots.

In the above worksheet picture, 225 servings are broken down into two options, Milk Powder + Protein and Recovery (carb + protein) powder. 

I based this off of price per calorie. I have done separate research as far as the quality of the calories and the nutrients that make up each supplement. 

On the right side of the sheet there is a 'number of boxes to order' which shows how many boxes/tubs are needed to make the 45 day trip when consuming 5 servings per day based on the manufactures serving size. I've also rounded up on boxes required. 

So ultimately, my plan is to work between the two liquid calorie supplements based on the diagram above (collapsing the B & C liquids into one). I'll purchase the required amount of each supplement and ration them out with the included scoop. I won't be individually packaging the powders into daily allotments. 

Meal Pattern Repetition: Part 2

This is Part 2 of Meal Pattern Repitition. See Part 1 for the beginning.

   This is a two part process as I am working with 2 vendors. We'll first go through how I added in variety within the first vendor (5 options) then how I layered the second vendor's options on top of the initial strategy. 

FYI, An alphabetical letter has been designated to each meal type. Similar to the examples in Part 1 but in grid format. 

Image: 1st Vendor Food Options with Grid

In Image 1, notice only 4 meals are entered for each day. I decided to include one meal from the second vendor each day. This was done because with 5 options as shown in Part 1, Example 1, meal variety over days didn't exist. This is also true over weeks with adding in only 1 meal from the second vendor. 

However, moving to 4 meal from vendor 1, gives me more variety within the day and week. Adding in the second vendor gives variety over weeks. 

Next, seeing the patterns, represented by the blue and red brackets, shows that similar meal patterns exist every 6 days. Knowing that we'll be out there for weeks, I wanted to improve upon this. 

In the Image, day 4, 8, 12, 16, N+4  will be populated by the second vendor's food entirely. This will give a break to the red/blue cycle and allow me to use even more variety.

This next image is what I call, the Nested Diagram, it shows the meals provided by both vendors. As this was a template for my own planning, I switched to using '1's to note a meal without regard to vendor. As a side note the 45th day's second to last meal breaks the pattern. This was a product of ordering a even number from the second vendor.

For meal planning patterns this is where i'm at currently. Look for a future post on further food selection including snacks. I'll also post up on how we're going to bag each day's rations once the food arrives. 

Image: Nested Diagram

In the end i believe the meal plan as shown above provides:

• a simple meal plan each day (grab a meal and eat from the daily bag)
• a simple plan over the course of weeks (build it while you're well rested and on land)
• a hedge against one vendor having a spoiled meal (packaging issue, placement in boat, etc.)
• variety of meals for nutrition and flavor
• Not a requirement but there's a modicum of cost optimization by using meals of different prices