Pemmican May Have Been the First Energy Bar (2024)

FAQs

Does pemmican give you energy? ›

Pemmican, with its combination of dried meat and fat, provides a calorie-dense option. It's particularly rich in fats, which are essential for long-lasting energy - a feature that made pemmican a vital survival food in harsh conditions.

Pemmican is a long-lasting, calorie-dense snack made from dehydrated meat, fruit, and rendered fat.

Pillsbury Space Food Bars and the bars by Tiger's Milk both came to market in the 1960s. Though they had protein, they were marked as energy or nutrition bars. PowerBar, invented in California in 1986, was an early protein bar.

Cooled and sewn into bison-hide bags in 41 kg lots, pemmican was a dense, high-protein and high-energy food that could be stored and shipped with ease to provision voyageurs in the fur trade travelling in the prairie regions where, especially in winter, food could be scarce.

Is pemmican good for you? When made with grass-fed meat, tallow, and other fresh ingredients, yes! Because pemmican has high concentrations of lean meat and fat, it is considered a high-calorie, high-protein, and high-fat snack. When it isn't combined with fruit, pemmican is essentially no-carb.

You don't want to survive on pemmican alone. Strenuous backpacking will lead to daily glycogen depletion, best re- plenished with carbohydrates. For low to moderate exertion of long duration, diets high in fat work relatively well, but require a prior period of adaptation.

At room temperature, pemmican can generally last from one to five years, but there are anecdotal stories of pemmican stored in cool cellars being safely consumed after a decade or more.

What is Pemmican? Traditionally, pemmican was made with a mixture of dried meat and rendered fat. Made properly, pemmican would last indefinitely and could sustain an individual for months. Our modern-day version consists of a blend of bison, beef, berries, and other natural ingredients.

Pemmican is a Simple and Inexpensive High-Energy Food.

Energy bars were the creation of the Pillsbury Corporation, who in the 1960s, capitalized on the popularity of the national space program by introducing the Space Food Stick. Since then, energy bars have become their own food type.

Does PowerBar still exist? ›

In 2021, PowerBar regained control of their brand and became a registered trademark of Premier Nutrition Company, LLC.

Protein bars meant to be used as meal replacements can be high in calories. Although higher-calorie bars are appropriate for a hearty snack or light meal, eating higher-calorie bars can lead to unintended weight gain over time if you don't consider how those calories fit into your diet as a whole.

The Red River Colony imposed on that economic order and, when famine threatened the settlement in mid-winter 1814, Governor Miles Macdonnell (1767-1828) issued what became known as the Pemmican Proclamation. This law was meant to stop the export of pemmican to NWC forts in the West and retain it for the HBC settlers.

This long shelf life and its nutritional density made it a staple for many explorers, including Lewis and Clark. For a survival food, it's not so bad. It tastes kind of like beef jerky, though if you eat it as-is, the fat will coat your mouth in a way that I found unpleasant.

Pemmican is high in protein, will last indefinitely, and is easy to carry. This was the food that allowed the voyageurs of the canoe and York Boat brigades to travel long distances without stopping to hunt. On the prairies where there was a shortage of fuel it had the advantage of using the sun to dry the meat.

A colonist eats ~40 pemmican a day. With 8 colonists for a: 10 day winter: 3200 pemmican. 20 day winter: 6400 pemmican.