>>419309It all depends on the time and resources you want to spend. If you have a car, you can bring a cooler or two, and if you put dry ice in one cooler, you can even bring ice cream. If you're car camping, you could eat as well or better than you do at home.
For backpacking food, I, like others, tend to bring one freeze-dried meal per day, supplemented with things like summer sausage, beef jerky, hard cheeses, nuts, dried fruit, trail mix, candy, cookies, energy/granola bars, granola, bagels/crackers (with spread or spreadable meats), salty snacks (like pretzel bits), flavorings for water (instant lemonade, tea, etc.) - really anything that is loaded with calories and that you like eating. You can bring as much fresh food as you like too, for the first couple nights.
I find that when I go into the mountains, I often get dehydrated and under-eat due to my body's different responses to thirst and hunger at high elevations. I have tried no-cook backpacking - just bringing snacks and ready-to-eat foods for all my meals - but I end up under-eating severely due to lack of interest in what I'm eating (on the last trip I did this, I ate <1 lb of food /day, on a 5 day trip). This tends to result in less energy throughout the day, and can end in getting a headache. Therefore, I think it's essential to have at least one large, hot meal per day that I can force myself to swallow.
My favorite off-the-shelf meals are the Mountain House Pro-Paks simply because of portion size and packed size. I don't like leaving excess food to start stinking in my food bag or attract bears. Some people have mentioned different brands as tasting better, but I find it's entirely dependent on flavor. For example, the MH Pro-Pak beef stew and chili mac are the main flavors I buy. Price really isn't that bad if you buy in bulk. Prepper websites tend to offer these in the $5-6/meal range. You can also buy larger meals and repackage them yourself:
http://www.packitgourmet.com/CookIn-Bags.html 
