Quoted By:
I'm going on a thru hike soon with a friend who's an experienced hiker. He mentioned that he's going stoveless and I thought "that kinda makes sense for me too. It'll save weight which makes more room for food and other stuff." I ran this by him and he said "Good luck" and then told me that I'd be missing out on hot food and, I just...
Whether food is hot or not hasn't really ever been a huge factor for me. Obviously, I don't want to attempt eating a frozen slice of pizza, but I'll drink coffee that's cooled off, and eat oatmeal with just water (without heating). This has been a recurring thing in my life (people insist that I drink cold water when room temp is fine. Same with beer: they will call room-temp beer "HOT BEER"), and I've noticed that it's basically just assumed that everyone knows a HOT MEAL is automatically better, in the self-evident same way that jacking off feels good.
I tried to Google it, too: "why is food being hot so important to people?" and it was more of the same. I remember watching a news story a few years ago where they were talking about the illegals being held at the border, and among the "human rights violations" being perpetrated by the administration at the time (according to the news station), was that the people being held were "denied a hot meal." I remember seeing that and thinking, "that's not really a human rights violation as long as they're eating."
Anyway, I acknowledge that I'm an outlier, and I don't think everyone else is weird or anything. I just want some insight on why it's so important to people. So, my real question is, is there some major thing I'm overlooking? Am I unknowingly making my trip way more challenging by foregoing HOT MEALS? I don't think I'll regret it but my friend's warning seemed pretty serious (even though he's not bringing a stove???)
