Touching the Cloth

Freeze-dried meal Poisoning

There are a lot of places where you don’t want food poisoning, but sharing a 9x7 portaledge has to be one of the worst.

There’s an excellent account of an attempt on the East/North face of Patkhor (6,083m) in Tajikistan, by Mick Fowler and Simon Yates over on UKclimbing at the moment. It’s written in true understated stiff-upper-lip Fowler style, with Mick making it sound like a rather unpleasant climbing holiday, when others would have spun it into a TED talk, a ten-book deal, and a green-lit Disney+ docuseries.

In the short account, there are a lot of very interesting things that went wrong., as things often do when climbing in the greater ranges (which is why they’re great), leading to a lost summit, a failed rappel anchor, a broken back, lost gear, and what anyone else would view as a near-death epic (or, a rather disappointing trip).

One thing that stood out for me, which might be a learning point but a point not talked about, was this:

"Mick ate all of his and Simon only managed a couple of mouthfuls before deciding it tasted bad. Within 30 minutes or so chemical burps started to burn our throats. This was exactly the reaction that Mick had with a freeze dried meal in 2019 and so we knew what was coming and had time to prepare as well as we could. Sure enough intense diarrhoea started shortly afterwards and lasted the whole night. Mick also vomited a little. In the morning we felt utterly drained."

The subject of food poisoning, ‘Deli Belly’, or ‘the shits’, is sometimes mentioned in accounts of big trips and expeditions, but like haemorrhoids, fist fights with partners you grow to hate, and the partaking of the meds kits, morphine, are generally left out.

Back in the day (the 80s), most people were very untraveled, and so the font of all knowledge on how not to get sick when abroad tended to come from students, who’d return from their journey to the Far East or Africa with yellow skin, farts that smelt of eggs, and worms that ate your lunch for you. Living in London, and working in a travel-related business (Survival Aids), I met a lot of these people, who seemed to get crap jobs while they both saved up for a return trip and to be close to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases. A few bits of knowledge you learned back then were as follows:

• Don’t eat salad.

• Only drink bottled water and check the seals.

• Don’t drink anything with ice in it.

• Wash everything you eat, and what you eat it with.

• Take drugs to bung you up when you get the shits, because you will get the shits.

This sounds like skimpy advice, but it seemed to serve me well, and I can count the number of times I get ill on trips on two fingers, even if one illness lasted for many months, and the other was picked up by a dodgy pizza in Majorca. The reason for this could be down to the following lessons:

• Always boil your water, no matter how clean the water source might seem. This is easy for me, as I don’t really drink water, only tea.

• Our ancestors drank beer for a reason, and so should you.

• Make your own food as much as possible.

• When you make your own food, keep it simple and wash all ingredients.

• If you’re going to eat out, eat simple food that will be fresh. For example, don’t order the fish, or the prawns unless you can see the sea from the restaurant window.

• Frying food seems to kill most known germs, so if in doubt, just eat chips.

• If you’re going to eat out, and you don’t want to ruin your trip, then eat food at a place where you expect the food to be OK, which will be more expensive than a place you feel you’re going to get sick.

• What the locals can stomach is not the same as what your stomach can handle.

When travelling/climbing my staples tend to be the following:

• Bread: They make bread every day and are made from flour, water and yeast, and although you’d imagine dirty water might be an issue, for some reason, it’s not. Bread is also great if you’re feeling unwell. I also mastered chapati making, and would often take a bag of flour (and butter), to make these with each meal (base camp meals), as flour is a good source of cards that you don’t have to stress about. If you want to make camping bread, take a folding chopping board (l use the MSR Alpine Deluxe Cutting Board), and a chapati rolling pin (you can use a Nalgene bottle, but a rolling pin is best).

• Eggs: These have been a staple all my climbing days (the first Spanish I learnt was “huevos”) as they cannot become contaminated, and only go bad, but will last for weeks and are generally plentiful in most places (a bad egg will float upright water, while a good egg will sink and lay on its side). Eggs can be made into countless meals, from good old fried egg butties to omelettes (the key is a very hot pan), pancakes, egg fried rice oh, and boiled eggs.

• Rice: Cheap, safe, low bulk and easy to cook. If fuel is no issue (petrol stove), then cook it as you wish, but if it is, then ration of 1:1.5 (rice to water), bring to a boil, cover, and simmer for 12 minutes (just for altitude, or use a pressure cooker), then take off the stove and leave for another 10 minutes. Nutrition-wise, I find I need to eat a lot of rice if I’m working hard, twice as much as pasta, so make a lot if you want to maintain energy levels.

• Pasta: if you can get it, pasta is the best. One of the simplest, and best meals you can make is spaghetti with olive oil (or butter), salt and pepper (and a bit of chilli powder/leaves), and some grated cheese. Add in some dried sausage for your full dose of carbs, fat and protein. You can eat this meal for months on end.

• Lentils: Cheap, safe, low bulk. Learn to make Dhal at home (use ghee), and eat it with rice and bread. Like rice, you need a lot more lentils to get the energy you need when on an expedition. Note, with a bit of juggling, I can cook rice, lentils and chapatis on a single camping stove.

• Porridge: Save, cheap, low bulk.

• Fat: fat is vital for the body on a hard trip, and it’s easy to taste if something is off. Butter tends to be universal, but needs careful storage, ghee seems to be better (comes in a tin), and olive is ideal in a medium HDPE bottle. If you’re planning on using oil cold, then be aware that some ‘cooking oils’ you buy in remote places can be ladled out of a big oil drum that might be a decade old (you can taste rancid animal fat, but not rancid sunflower oil).

• Salt, pepper, sugar, in date, and seal milk powder in packets; milk in a tube and bars are always safe.

I could go on, but the aim of this article is to question a type of food poisoning that most people are unaware of, which is a source of food that is often employed in order to avoid food poisoning, which is dried food.

Why use dehydrated food?

I’ve been on multi-month trips where all we’ve eaten is dehydrated; just add water dried food. Just taking a huge holdall filled with such food makes life simple, if eventually very dull. You boil some water, grab a packet that you’ve only eaten twenty times (not fifty), like ‘Pasta with Monkfish’, add water, let sit for a while, and then eat. On a busy expedition, you may want to die or eat one of your partner’s juicy legs by the end, but it is low-stress and gets the job done. It’s also a lightweight option, that requires no cleaning of pots and pans and is easy on the logistics (8 people x 2 packets a day x 60 days). You can fit it on one line of a spreadsheet. Alternatively, try working out a shopping list and menu using ‘real food’.

Is just eating dried food for weeks or months good for you? Well, just like the Franklin expedition, which came to a slow, sticky end due to putting their trust in new-fangled food technology (lead soldered tins), I think not. If you can do it, eating real food, and together, is best in every way, even if it’s dhal every night and porridge for breakfast.

The other main reason is dehydrated food is ideal as climbing food as it’s lightweight, compact, quick to cook, tasty, and ideal for mountain cooking, which might be done lying in a tent, sitting on a ledge, or simply standing up!

Before dried food was widely available and the norm, climbers made do with all sorts of concoctions (my old piece ‘MMs, Pig Fat and Baby Food’ covers most of them), with potato powder and Super Noodles being the most popular. But what would you rather have, a low-rent pot noodle, cooked in the cup you have to use for your cup of tea and porridge, and wee, or, a beef Wellington?

This style of food is ideal ‘assault’ rations, for one night, to a week, as it makes life really simple, but is there a downside?

Dyhdrated poison

I’ve been on several trips when people got really sick, as in shitting themselves and vomiting for several days, and being left weak for weeks, where the only culprit was a dodgy dried meal.

In 2015, I went up to try and solo the Harlin on the Eiger (second attempt), only to find that much of my expensive dried food had gone rancid, even though it was in date and in good condition. Luckily for me, I didn’t get ill, but I had to come down, as I didn’t want to be up there alone, shitting myself in my sleeping bag!

Remember that a meal may have been made several years earlier (some meals have a 30-year life span!), sealed in a bag, shifted around in a box, stuck on a shelf, carried home, stuffed in a cupboard, packed in a page, travelled via taxi, plane, donkey, and when eventually opened, only heated up with some barely hot enough hot water, cooled rapidly by sub-zero temperatures, and then gobbled down. The fact these things don’t lead to more illness is a miracle!

A few key points:

• Dried food has a use-by/sell-by date for a reason. Yes, your chicken supper might have been bombarded by NASA-level tech, designed to make it take like the day it was made, but such food tech only slows down decay, and the growth of bacteria, it does not kill it. If you have a big pile of meals, take the time to check the use-by dates.

• A sealed, air-filled packet of food can easily be punctured, especially if it’s expanded at altitude, or during a flight (it won’t burst, but blowing up could cause a puncture).

• The best way to avoid compromised packaging is to use vacuum-sealed meals, which will expand if they’re pricked by a pin.

• I’d view dried food as perishable, as in, you go ski touring and carry a load of meals with you. The meals are battered during the trip, but you have half left. You save them for the following year, not knowing they are no longer sealed and the bacteria is now coming alive. Just buy what you want to use on the trip, and what isn’t eaten on the trip, should be eaten at home as soon as you can stomach it.

• The simpler the food, the less there is to go off and cause you trouble. For example, pasta cheese and tomato is far less risky than pulled pork with rice. In my experience, chicken and beef seem to be more stable than pork and fish (the Jews forbid such things for a reason), while a veggie option removes one big vector of risk.

• On some climbs, it’s often normal to share one meal between two, with each climber taking turns with their spoon. Apart from being very unsatisfying, as you always think your mate is getting more than you, it also means you’ll both get poisoned at the same time. Ideally, you want someone to look after you and get you down, so avoid sharing if you can.

• Be aware of reselling, or gifting of meals. A big, or small expedition will often end with a lot of uneaten meals, which might end up being given to someone who might sell them to you, or just give them away. Such meals might end up going up the mountain for a second time, or tenths! It is best to get your food from either the manufacturer or a store with a quick turnover in stock.

• Be aware of meals left in climbing huts or stashes. Although they might look fine, they can often have been nibbled on by rats or mice, or have been left behind by Walter Bonnati around the same time as the moon landings.

• If you’re worried about the food you’ve got, but it’s all you have to eat, then stick it in a pan, add double the amount of water required, heat it up, boil it for ten minutes and eat it with crossed fingers.

Just to show that it’s not just dried meals that we need to worry about, a friend of mine once spent some time in an Alpine hut one winter, and found a big tub of rice. Each night, he’d scoop up a big serving of the rice, cook it and eat it. It was only on the last night, with the rice almost gone, that he made a fateful scoop, and up came a dead mouse.