UKC

Rosker Travellunch Sampled by CarolineMc

© CarolineMc
This is the second UKClimbing.com user review of Travellunch, the freeze-dried meals distributed by Rosker. In the first Alicia samples the delights of Pasta in a Creamy Sauce with Herbs, Scrambled Eggs and Mousse au Chocolate. You can read here review here and the associated debate about trans-fats / hydrogenated veg oils here.

We have several other user reviews of Travellunch coming up in the next month. Here's CarolineMc's to add to the mix. She sampled Vegetable Risotto, Creamy Herb Pasta and Chocolate Muesli with Milk.


My lasting memory of dehydrated expedition food is a Raven Chili-con-Carne, eaten somewhere near the Cheviot in 1992. Anyone else who's tried this, er, delicacy is likely to agree that it is an experience not to be repeated. Hence my further forays into the world of dried food have generally been limited to Bachelor's Pasta 'n' Sauce and the occasional bowl of noodles served at Awesome Walls. So, bring forth the Travellunch test - three silver foil packages promising tasty meals with minimum fuss. Weighing in at just 125g, they were certainly light, easy and convenient to make! But were they any good?

I took the Vegetable Risotto out on the hill one afternoon and was looking forward to a hot meal instead of the customary (and legendary?) pork pie. After boiling up the water and pouring it in the pouch I gave the powder a pretty good stir with my spork and let it stew. I was disappointed to find that despite this I'd still missed quite a lot of the goo and when I got to the bottom of the pack, there was a solid lump. The other disappointment was the serious lack of vegetables. I checked the ingredients and found only 3% peas, 3% carrots and 1% mushrooms. To be honest it felt like less but the presence of salt was far more apparent and on checking, it appeared above mushrooms on the ingredient list. In all, it was relatively all right, quite filling and would make a good emergency meal on a lightweight expedition if you lacked the energy or effort to make anything else.

Looking apprehensive with the first spork full of the lovely Risotto  © CarolineMc
Looking apprehensive with the first spork full of the lovely Risotto
© CarolineMc

Next up was the Chocolate Muesli with Milk (not for dessert, I might add!), which could be served hot or cold. Being 'summer' I thought I'd try it cold so I added a random amount of cold water and gave it a stir, but then I wondered what the bits that looked like rats droppings were. Turns out they were crunchy choccy bits - cool! I was also happy to find quite a lot of real milk chocolate too. Muesli is one of my least favourite things to eat but I was pleasantly surprised - it was filling, tasty and actually quite satisfying. However, for the price (rrp £2.40) frankly I'd expect a handsome butler to come and serve it to me on a silver salver. I could buy a big box of Tesco's Finest and some Five Pints for that kinda cash!

Finally it was the turn of the Creamy Herb Pasta. Remembering the lack of tasty ingredients in the risotto, I cheated a little and fried up a couple of rashers of streaky bacon to go with this one! Ignoring my added extras, the meal was more filling than the first but again the mix was quite salty and unfortunately the pasta was macaroni. This ensured that some of the powder was hiding in the tubes and escaped the hot water which would have made it a tasty sauce. Instead I'd get a sudden crunchy, salty mouthful and needed a drink to hand. Perhaps fusili twists might have been a better bet? Still, like before, it made a reasonable meal to fill a hole.

So all in all, an interesting experiment. I'm not sure I'd have these three offerings again, but maybe if I was trying to limit the weight in my sack and needed some emergency food I'd chuck one or two in. They're certainly convenient and a reasonable size but they're expensive for what you get and I'd be reluctant to have them as my sole source of expedition food - I'm not sure my blood pressure could cope with all the salt!!

C-:

Pack weights: 125g (although these varied between 130g and 145g)

Vegetable Risotto: Kjoule/100g: 1607; Kcal/100g: 381; Protein (g)/100g: 7.0; Carbohydrate (g)/100g:64.1; Fat (g)/100g:10.7; Required Water: 375ml

Pasta in a Creamy Sauce with Herbs: Kjoule/100g: 1730; Kcal/100g: 412; Protein (g)/100g: 10.0; Carbohydrate (g)/100g:56.4; Fat (g)/100g:16.2; Required Water: 400ml

Chocolate Muesli with Milk: Kjoule/100g: 1707; Kcal/100g: 405; Protein (g)/100g: 10.8; Carbohydrate (g)/100g:63.1; Fat (g)/100g:12.2


UK Availability and details of the full range at : www.rosker.com

Stockists: www.rosker.com/stockists/documents/travellunchstockistlist.pdf

Travellunch are available all over the UK from:Snow and Rock, Cotswold Outdoors, Tisos, Nevisport, Blacks, Footprints, Up and Under, Joe Browns, Outside, Penrith Survival, Outdoor Wharehouse, One Step Beyond, Hitch n Hike, Go Outdoors, FaceWest, Oswald Bailey, Open Air, Tackle Up, Trail Venture, Taunton Leisure, Outdoors and Active and more.


Travel Lunch Meals Travellunch is made in Augsburg, southern Germany. It is good food that is freeze-dried to retain more flavour and nutritional values than simple dehydrated food.

Each menu has been produced to meet the energy and more complex nutritional requirements of outdoor enthusiasts.There is a wide choice of breakfasts, main meals, soup and desserts with numerous options for vegetarians.

Apart from 4 of the menus, the meals are prepared simply and quickly by adding hot water (or cold water for desserts and muesli breakfasts) to the foil pouch which expands as the meal prepares itself ready for eating. The pouch becomes free standing and the foil retains much of the heat. These meals can be eaten straight from the pouch.




10 Aug, 2009
How disgusting!!! Here is an ingredients list and some comments about a few of the ingredients. Travellunch Energy Muesli: Ingredients: Rolled oats, whey protein, (20%), whole milk powder, sultanas, honey, maltodextrin,sugar, hazelnut croquant, raisins, rice, wheat flakes, malt extract, dates, strawberries, sunflower seeds,apples, banana, flavouring, whey product, acidifier: citric acid. 1) whey protein - This is a hydrolyzed product that contains free glutamic acid 2) maltodextrin - This may contain MSG and/or MSG may be produced during processing. 3) malt extract - As for maltodextrin. 4) flavouring - This could be ANY NUMBER OF UN-NAMED CHEMICALS that have been allowed, because of political lobbying by the chemical and food industries, to remain unlisted individually. Please look this up for yourself. Free glutamates and glutamic acid (of which MSG is the most famous example and is known by many many other names)... Are excitotoxins that cause nerve damage in the brain. They cause brain lesions (meaning that they kill brain cells). They cause retinal damage (meaning that the ability to process light received into the eye is impaired. Cause hypothalamus lesions (The hypothalamus acts upon the pituitary gland to control the release of hormones and within itself affects the regulation of temperature in the body.) Cause, through the impairment of hormonal functions, damage to the ability to control appetite and most people who eat unnatural glutamates will leave the meal unsatisfied and wanting more food shortly afterwards. They are also addictive and are the most common cause of obesity in today's society. Just look around you! Ever wondered why "When you pop, you can't stop"??? I appreciate that people have choices and that this type of product may be appropriate for, amongst others, those who do not care about their health and so I offer this information only as a platform for those who are interested to use as a starting point for doing their own research. To say that something is GM free and provides x number of grams of some nutritional aspect and y number of grams of another is just a distraction to stall the reader from looker further into what the ingredients actually are. Good luck and stay healthy.
10 Aug, 2009
Whilst I try to avoid MSG wherever possible, because I came to realise that it did odd things to me, would you have any good starting points for this research; you've made a lot of interesting points without any references. Perferably peer-reviewed references. Thanks. I certainly agree with the point about labelling, and the 'hidden' ingredients lurking under the catch-all 'flavouring'. I'd much rather know what's in the packet in clear terms.
10 Aug, 2009
And remember folks, don't drink too much water else you'll die from that as well. Whilst there are certain things in food you buy that aren't the best, eating stuff like this is hardly going to kill you.
10 Aug, 2009
Thankfully the one I tested has slightly less worrying ingredients... Rolled oats, chocolate (17%), whole milk powder, sugar, honey, maltodextrin, wholemeal oat flour, corn starch, Malt extrakt, hazelnut croquant, salt. Yep, Maltodextrin can be MSG but it's in a very small quantity here. Corn starch, I think, is not too bad in the nasty stakes (waiting now to be flamed) and again it's in a very small quantity. I was just pleased that salt played such a small part after the rice and pasta!! C-:
10 Aug, 2009
Nice name mate. Peer reviewed articles are generally peer reviewed in order to publish which means that one would have to have a subscription to the relevant journal in order to get access to their archives. Of course your local medical library may have some of the journals listed at this site: http://www.truthinlabeling.org/hiddensources.htm The data is extensive. I avoid MSG full stop (having learned all of the pseudonyms that it hides under)... and 'flavouring' and 'natural flavouring' and 'spices' and well anything else that doesn't tell me what it is. Aspartame and aculsfame K are another leading major nasty, and they are in nearly every soft drink that you can imagine and definitely are in drinks that quote themselves as 'sugar free' or 'diet'. They become the exceptionally carcinogenic formaldehyde when the body digests them. The other major playerus horribilis is 'glucose fructose syrup' also know as inverted and partially inverted sugar syrup and known in the USA as 'high fructose corn syrup'. It causes liver disfunction and obesity. Lastly my major player list concludes with Soy(a) which has an estrogen mimicking effect that can cause post-menopausal osteoperosis in women and hormonal imbalance in men and women. There are others but this is a climbing forum :-) hehe (got a few out there again:-) My recomendation to everyone is to read the ingredients of everything that you eat and bit by bit read about all of the items that are not something that (euphemistically) can be grown in the ground. A good method is to scroogle (scroogle.org/scraper.html - google results without the tracking of google's "persistent cookie") the ingredient and add the word 'toxic' at the end. Then just remember that not everything we read is true (even science journals) and look for corroburrating evidence to everything that you are not happy with. I live a fabulous diet with no difficulty and everything I find out interests me so a double wammy.
More Comments
Loading Notifications...
Facebook Twitter Copy Email