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RESEARCH | NUTRITION AND ENERGY By Shannon Rochelle Research Project Manager
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f you were a NOLS student before 2005, you probably remember your rations as pasta and cheese, rice and beans, maybe some incredible bakedfrom-scratch cinnamon rolls or cheese pizza, but very little in the way of meat, unless it came from fish you or your coursemates caught. Graduates of more recent courses likely had the option for summer sausage on their pizza and packaged tuna or salmon in their pasta. Why this change in rations? How well do NOLS rations fuel students’ activities? How many calories does a NOLS student use each day? We have been investigating these and related questions so NOLS students are optimally fueled for their backcountry adventures. NOLS Rocky Mountain Rations Manager Claudia Pearson initiated the first nutrition study at NOLS. In 1999, she analyzed the rations of seven randomly selected courses and found that, on average, they provided 3,200 calories
per person per day. Of those calories, 58 percent came from carbohydrates, 11 percent from protein, and 31 percent from fat. U.S. dietary guidelines suggest that 45-65 percent of calories should come from carbohydrates, 10-35 percent from protein and 20-35 percent from fat. Those same guidelines estimate daily caloric needs for active males aged 15 to 30 to be between 3,000 and 3,200 and for active 15- to 30-year-old females to be 2,400. The total number of calories and the distribution of calories among the three macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein and fat) all fell within recommended ranges, though the percentage of calories from protein was toward the low end of the range. In response to this study and feedback from students and instructors, packaged fish, jerky, and summer sausage became part of NOLS rations, supplementing the dairy and vegetable proteins that had been an important part of rations since the beginning.
In 2008, NOLS published Backcountry Nutrition by Registered Dietician Mary Howley Ryan to share our knowledge about fueling active students in the backcountry. After the book was published, Professor Cara Ocobock of SUNY—Albany approached NOLS about researching energy expenditure on courses. Her goal was to create a new, improved method to estimate how much energy highly active humans expend under various environmental conditions. Cara’s study participants recorded what they ate, how far they hiked each day, and in winter how many hours they spent shoveling snow. In addition, Cara measured each subject’s body composition (total mass, fat mass, and muscle mass) and resting metabolic rate before and after their time in the field. She estimated in temperate conditions, where days were warm and nights were cool (as in the mountains of Wyoming in summer), the students’ energy expenditure ranged from 2,400 to 4,200 calories per day. She also found the students were, on average, expending more energy than they were consuming. Rations available offered adequate energy, but were not consumed as needed. In response to this finding, NOLS enhanced our nutrition curriculum and increased our emphasis on nutrition education on all courses.
Shannon Rochelle
Left: Packing rations for a NOLS expedition. Tracy Baynes, STEP program Right: Cooking cheesy pasta for dinner in the field. Kaytlynn Welsch
Shannon has been a NOLS instructor since 1999 and NOLS research manager since 2014. She spends her free time running across the mountains and plains of Wyoming with her dog.
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