Food costs compared to Gasoline riding cross country USA I was on vacation at Mesa Verde Nat park this year, I met a nice couple bicycling cross country from California, they were riding reasonably loaded Surly Big Dummy's. They were surprised at the calories burned and the cost of food on the road to keep up energy levels. They said they could do 35 miles on a very good day, averaged 20, mind you they were in South West Colorado headed to central Colorado, lots of steep climbs. They set up camp every night and cooked what they had at the time, basically living on the road toting all the gear on the back of the bikes, guitar and all, awesome guitar player by the way.

.



This brought to mind an interesting question, is it more expensive to feed yourself per mile cross country than it is to buy gasoline on a per mile basis, I know this is quite subjective and may not be easily answered due to the fact that different vehicles use fuel at different rates and gasoline and food costs are different in other countries. So lets set some reasonable parameters. Food energy cost vs gasoline costs.

USA

22 mpg car

Reasonably loaded Big Dummy's (all the gear, and a few comforts you need to make camp cross country) They had high quality lightweight camping equipment from what I could tell. Max cargo capacity including rider is 400lbs on the Big Dummy.

LA California to Denver, scenic routes.

Food costs: are higher due to inconvenient places to shop and limited carrying capacity and food spoilage issues.

Has anyone ever done a study on this subject or kept track on a long bike trip cross country?
I rode the Southern Tier last year and used a GPS app on my phone that estimated caloric output. Probably not very accurately, but it gives us a number to kick around. My distance was right around 3000 miles.

Total estimated calories burned over the ride was 143,000. That would be equivalent to 265 Big Macs (540 cals per Big Mac). Not that I ate any Big Macs, but it's a handy yardstick. A Big Mac costs about $4. So that would be $1056 in "fuel" if that's all you ate. I'm assuming that you would burn about the same number of calories whether you rode a relatively small number of high-mileage days or a large number of low-mileage days (I think that technically this is wrong because in the latter case you've got more off-bike time during which you're also burning calories).

Interestingly, a gallon of gas costs about $4 right now too, depending on where you are. If you're in a car and getting 22 mpg over the same distance, and filling up with $4/gal gas, you'll spend $545.

Although I did keep track of my food costs at the time, I no longer have that data handy. I was not cooking a lot of my own food—mostly eating out. So my food costs were higher than they had to be. On the other hand, you could not get away with just pasta--you'd need a lot more protein and fat to keep going over the long haul. As it is, I lost about 15 lb.