Backpacking Long Spoon Buyer Advice
Why most backpackers should choose a long handle spoon
For most backpackers most of the time, a long handle spoon is the right utensil for the job. If you eat freeze dried meals, choose a long spoon. If you cook with a tall and narrow pot and eat out of it, use a long handle spoon. It makes eating out of the bottom half of your vessel much cleaner, and your fingers wont brush against the oily/wet/sticky top half sidewall of a meal bag.
Why choose a titanium backpacking spoon
A titanium backpacking spoon is the lightest weight, strongest, most durable, and most expensive option. Titanium is harder than steel, aluminum, plastic, or wood. And titanium is lighter than steel or aluminum. It never leeches harmful chemicals or micro plastics. Because of its strength-to-weight ratio and performance qualities, it is one of the most sought-after metals, and thus is also the most expensive. That’s how economics work.
Why does my backpacking spoon have an upward angled bowl
The purpose of the upwards tilted spoon bowl end is specifically for eating out of freeze dried meal bags. Unlike bowls which are much shallower, meal bags require a much more vertical approach angle as you dip the spoon in. Halfway between a traditional table spoon and ladle, this design serves the purpose of assisting you in lifting food out of the bag without food falling off of your spoon as you pull back in a somewhat vertical orientation.
When not to choose a long spoon for backpacking
If you eat directly out of a shallow pot or bowl, a regular length spoon will be more user friendly, more cost effective, more packable, and slightly lighter weight. The entire point of long spoons is that it makes eating out freeze dried meal bags and deep/narrow pots easier. If that’s not what you use, then you simply don’t need a long handle spoon.
Why spoons are better than sporks
The backpacking spoon vs spork debate is settled, and spoons win in a landslide. Let us count the ways:
- Spoons are better for eating wet food. Most backpacking food that requires a utensil is compromised of small pieces in a wet sauce. There are not large chunks to be speared. But there is always leftover sauce or bits to be scooped out. The fork portion of a spork is essentially wasted on backpacking food.
- A spoon’s bowl end holds more volume than a spork, which squanders some of its volume on pointy tips.
- Sporks are prone to poking things. They can tear a whole in your ditty sack, puncture a freeze dried meal bag, rip through polyester, and all sorts of other minor calamities
- Because of the shallow ending points, sporks aren’t actually good at spearing anything, even if there were things to spear. We estimate that 95% of spork-based action is just using it to be an inferior spoon.
- Sporks are worse than spoons at spooning and worse than forks at forking, they’re bad at everything and good at nothing.
Avoid Double Ended Spoon Fork Hybrid Utensils
We recommend against choosing a hybrid ended utensil. That is, the type where one end is a fork and the other is a spoon. It sounds good in theory, but ends up being harder to eat backpacking food with and more likely to puncture something. Spoons, on the other hand, are easier to eat with and safer to pack. It’s just not very user friendly to have a fork pointing up at your while you eat with the spoon end 95% of the time. In closing, the fork end is nearly useless, adds weight, cost, and breakage points, damages surrounding gear, and creates a less friendly eating experience. Just choose a spoon!
