What a freeze-dried meal costs in Spain, brand by brand

How the comparison is built

Every brand here is priced twice: per 1,000 kcal, because that’s what you eat, and per kilo, because that’s what you carry. The prices are what a buyer in Spain pays, in two shops that deliver here.

Price per 1,000 kcal, brand by brand

Across the 22 brands, 1,000 kcal of freeze-dried meal costs from €12.69 to €29.53, and the median brand charges €18.30.¹² A kilo of dry food runs from €52.51 to €143.73.¹²

The ten in between, per 1,000 kcal and per kilo, from cheaper to dearer:

• Voyager €15.77 and €66.03; Trek’n Eat €16.05 and €58.08.¹
• Forclaz, Decathlon’s own brand, €16.86 and €66.58.²
• Tiberino €17.62 and €71.52; Marie de Livinhac €18.12 and €79.75; Summit To Eat €18.47 and €88.72.¹
• Travellunch €18.96 and €80.45; Good Mood Meals €19.19 and €88.39.¹
• Radix Nutrition €20.42 and €86.16; Real Turmat €21.20 and €96.87.¹

Read the shop’s tipo de preparación line before you buy. Adventure Food, MX3 and Leader Outdoor, three of the four cheapest, are listed as a mix of freeze-dried and dehydrated food, and so are Voyager, Trek’n Eat, Tiberino, Marie de Livinhac, Travellunch and Good Mood Meals.¹ That isn’t a reason to skip them, but it is a reason to compare like with like.

Why the price per pouch misleads

The pouches behind these figures weigh from 82 g to 210 g and hold from about 300 kcal to over 1,000.¹ A small pouch looks cheap on the shelf and turns out dear at the table.

A 1,000 kcal pouch is two meals for most people and one for someone climbing all day. Per kilo and per kcal also sort brands differently: Sly is sixth cheapest per kcal and twelfth per kilo, because its pouches are heavy with energy; Trek’n Eat is third cheapest per kilo and eighth per kcal.¹

For a day of food, take the median: 2,000 kcal of pouches at €18.30 per 1,000 is about €37, against about €25 from the cheapest brand and €59 from the dearest.¹

Two more lines on the label change the sum. The water: from 140 ml to over 500 ml a pouch,¹ which you carry unless there’s a tap where you eat. And the date: the best-before tells you how long it keeps sealed, so a cheap pouch with a short date costs more than it looks if it ends up in the bin.

Why freeze-dried meals cost what they do

The drying is the expense. Freeze-drying takes four to ten times the energy of hot-air drying,⁶ the product’s cost depends mainly on how many hours it spends in the dryer, and the equipment costs about three times as much as other dryers.⁷ A dish is frozen, then its ice is drawn off as vapour in a vacuum over many hours, which puts it in a different price class from dried apricots; the process is in the difference between freeze-dried and dehydrated.

Where ours sit

Our three mains in the same three slots are Chicken & Rice, Pasta Bolognese and Lentil & Vegetable Stew, the last one without meat. Each is a Large pouch, cooked first, then freeze-dried whole.

Our three mains in the basket slots: price, weight, energy and water

Pouch	Price	Net weight	Energy	Water
Chicken & RiceLarge	€16.90€84.50/kg	200 g	834 kcal	370 ml
Pasta BologneseLarge	€16.90€84.50/kg	200 g	856 kcal	330 ml
Lentil & Vegetable StewLarge	€16.90€84.50/kg	200 g	731 kcal	490 ml

Our three mains in the basket slots: price, weight, energy and water

• Chicken & RiceLarge

  Price

  €16.90€84.50/kg

  Net weight

  200 g

  Energy

  834 kcal

  Water

  370 ml

• Pasta BologneseLarge

  Price

  €16.90€84.50/kg

  Net weight

  200 g

  Energy

  856 kcal

  Water

  330 ml

• Lentil & Vegetable StewLarge

  Price

  €16.90€84.50/kg

  Net weight

  200 g

  Energy

  731 kcal

  Water

  490 ml

Divide each price by its kcal and multiply by 1,000, and ours come out in the dearer half of the table. Taken together, as the other brands’ three were, they sit above the median per 1,000 kcal and per kilo and below the six dearest brands; the lentil stew, the one with the least energy, lands among those six on its own. If price per calorie is the only measure, the brands at the top of the first table beat us.

From our range

Chicken & RiceLarge

834 kcal in a Large pouch, made up with 370 ml of water.

€16.90€84.50/kgHear from us before the shop opensSee the dish

Cheaper ways to carry 1,000 kcal

Food that isn’t freeze-dried costs far less per calorie. The catch is weight and water: cooked lentils from a jar are mostly water already, and at 87 kcal per 100 g, 1,000 kcal of them weigh over a kilo before the glass,⁸ against roughly a quarter of a kilo of dry pouch.¹

The cheapest freeze-dried basket still costs more than twice the dearest line here. For a reserve that stays on a shelf, tins and jars do the job for less, and emergency food compared weighs them up. For food on your back, the weight decides, and food for a multi-day hike does the sums by the gram. Where to find the pouches in a Spanish shop is in where to buy freeze-dried meals in Spain.