I have a BV 500. I can, if necessary, fit nearly 11 days worth of food for one person into it. This is on the basis of about 1.5 lb of food per day. Please note that my meal selection for the eleven days is planned for compactness and high calorie content rather than for flavor; for example, rice or couscous rather than ramen or macaroni. The full weight has ranged from 15 to 17 pounds. I cook in, and eat from, a pot rather than a bag; this helps save a little space since I use Baggies, trimmed after closing, rather than freezer bags. Freezer bags are heavy I have learned; 3-4 to an ounce. I also pre-compress a lot of stuff like granola to reduce the space it occupies.

When I pack the BV for a long hike, I generally spend a lot of time fitting things carefully into it, a full days food at a time, and I put things in according to my best estimate of when they will be coming out. This is important for the first few days. Mostly I will pack the BV before the trip but when I hiked the JMT last summer, I had to carry ten days worth from Muir Trail Ranch. This was mailed to MTR in a resupply bucket containing several vacuum-packed parcels. When I got to MTR, I had to unpack the resupply package, open the vacuum-sealed packages, and fit all of the stuff into the BV. Sadly, what fit at home did not quite fit at MTR. Fortunately, I anticipated this possibility and so included an Ursack with the resupply on the chance this would happen. I used the Ursack for about a day and a half south of MTR.