Amen. Walking in a store like REI or MEC, and indeed in grocery stores too one sees the expensive trail bars; I prefer to select among quite a variety of bars sold by the box typically in the cereal aisle of a grocery store. I can't imagine paying up for the spendy ones, except to give me more variety on longer trips with resupply --- I'll sometimes get some "more trendy" bars in bulk at Costco at not too bad of a price. Or best yet, get more typical "cereal aisle" bars in bulk at Costco. In any event, I'm too lazy to try to make them! :-)

In terms of freeze dried meals --- I think those are just another triumph of marketing, like bottled water. It's just as easy and as far as I can tell I do just as well with a Knorr side dish meal as I do with a Mountain house meal, indeed perhaps tossing in some TVP. Just less expense, and minus the rigid and heavy aluminized packaging.

To be clear, I feel the same way about various sports "foods", like energy gel gu or the like. Clearly not everyone agrees, but I seem to do fine over extended periods with just normal stuff from a grocery store. At times I've tried things like protein shakes, but when I inevitably slide down to a simpler alternative out of convenience/laziness, I never seem to experience any negative consequences.