Thanks for that info. I had already rejected the Crocodile Dundee approach: "Tastes like shite, but it will keep you alive." I don't believe that healthy backpacking food (or food while on a diet) needs to taste bad. Portion control and preparation (grilling v. frying, etc.) appears more important.

I tried the muffin for breakfast yesterday, with 2 small Jimmy Dean sausage patties, before a round of golf. Used a thin layer of peanut butter (as opposed to the way my granddaughters do it, where you end up with peanut butter on your nose), but thick enough that you couldn't see the muffin through it. Tasted very good, and kept me going quite well. Ate a banana and a six or eight Triscuit wheat crackers while playing golf, and felt really good the whole time. (I'd been having energy highs and lows, and a generally crappy feeling, for the last couple of weeks, before seeing the urologist.)

I also eat a fair amount of peanuts (in fact, I just had a handful as a mid-morning snack) - and some mixed nuts. Of course, before I found out what was going on, many of them were in the form of a chocolate nut sundae. Guess those days are over, or at least greatly diminished. But, hey, nuts taste good by themselves, too, and have been a consistent part of my hiking menu for years.

Those nuts were mostly salted. Does Planter's dry-roasted versus something like Planter's large Virginia peanuts with sea salt make a huge difference? (And yes, I do like the dry-roasted variety, too.)

I don't intend to let breakfast or supper be ordeals, either. Last night, to see how it affected preparation, fuel usage, etc., I cooked up a bag of Success brown rice. My GSI Soloist handled the details quite well (it used a bit more fuel, and my days of freeze-dried meals where pot=bowl=cup are over, so its going to cost me a couple of ounces - but that's a truly negligible setback.) I sprinkled a little parmesan cheese over it, and ate a couple of bites - tasted great.

So, I think I've got the start of a menu, and probably hashed out most of my kitchen equipment/method.

The last week or so, I've been finding that this doesn't appear to be too hard for me to manage, and I'm still getting to eat a lot of flavorful food - just not all of it at once. I don't mean it to sound like I'm gloating, or that it's a snap. I know it's not that simple, and we haven't done the full range of blood tests yet, so I may be in for a very abrupt, rude awakening. However, after cutting out all obvious sugars (no soda, ice cream, cookies, candies, etc.), avoiding fried/fatty foods, adding a little more fruit and a lot more vegetables, going on a more regular eating schedule, and using a little better portion control, most of the energy sags and I-generally-feel-like-crap that I'd experienced for the last 3 or 4 weeks have gone away, and I'm back to probably 95% of normal. This makes me hopeful that diet will control it.

As far as changes in my hiking habits, I'm going to clean up my act as far as menu, then take a couple of "simulated" trips (5 or 6 mile days, on loops where I'm never more than a couple of miles from the car and where I have cell service, just in case) to start working on a more regular hiking schedule: regular snacks & breaks, regular meals, and a steadier hiking pace.

I'm cautiously optimistic.