take a deli sandwhich on Day 1 - and do not count the sandwhich in their food weight

This sort of thing never fails to delight me! Who are they trying to impress? And why?! The number of people who might be impressed by someone bragging how light their pack is (and lying their head off, too) must be vanishingly small.

It would be interesting to compare how many ultralight backpackers there are vs. the number of hardcore star trek groupies. I bet the ULers would come out at less than a tenth the number!