Basic food rations Tinned fruitcake or Mainstay Lifeboat bars?

[Bothwell Voyageur]

Good points.

So instead of Mainstay why not just look at regular energy bars? Lost to choose from and you don't really need them to last 5 years! Clif bars are huge here or we have a very local to me GORP bar which has a load of great ingredients.

Only takes a couple of hours to put meals together, who needs sleep anyway. You'll be so hyper by the time you arrive and with strange time zones you won't be able to sleep so why not use the time productively!

[Moondog55]

Most energy/muesli bars I have tried are nauseatingly sweet, much sweeter than my usual fruitcake. Somebody on a local forum who has tried the Mainstay bar mentioned that it was only marginally sweeter than bread. I won't be tasting one here if I can avoid it, I just found out that the local cost of a 1200calorie bar is $14- EACH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 10 times the cost of the same calories in a couple of Mars bars
You're right, much cheaper to buy some pots and baking trays when I get over and spend a couple of days making good dense fruit cake

[Old Guide]

If that is so Old Guide then we need to add in another hundred grams of fat and an extra 100 grams of starch and sugar in the planning, that's another 1000 calories or 3 Mars /Snickers bars [ or another 1200 calorie Mainstay bar as per the posts title]
My maintenance calorie intake is about 2500 per day, the others in the party are of similar age and requirements.

Make sure those extra calories aren't just sugar. One needs nutrition.

[Moondog55]

Make sure those extra calories aren't just sugar. One needs nutrition.

True but also I have seen and read speculation that one of the reasons for the spectacular failure of RFScott was [ as well as an all round calorie deficit] a lack of simple sugars in the diet, which is surprising when you think about how popular Kendal Mint Cake and Barley sugar were in England at that time.

Still we have learned a lot from his mistakes as well as the success's of others

[southcove]

I know nothing of mint cake or Barley Sugar...huh? 

But I do know that Scott's men wrote glowingly in their journals of a secret ingredient in their 'hoosh' meal pots on the way to the pole, called Victor.   Said to be quite the ingredient. 

[K.]

I'd personally go with a box or twenty of the afore-mentioned clif bars, and if you're crossing paths with folks on this forum along the way maybe they can hook you up with a side-trip to Costco which is the best deal that I know of. But if sugar fraction of the calories is a concern with the energy bar category then there's also the so-called protein bar category, also available in bulk at costco, where the calories from sugar are reduced somewhat. The thing about these modern high-tech bars is some of them are qualified as meal-replacement. I first learned about this key distinction from a guy that lifted weights, simple calories weren't enough it had to be the whole mix of vitamins, minerals, riboflavin, you name it.

[Old Guide]

Skratch has a new high protein energy bar on the market.
I have not tried it.