I am a MN native who hasn't lived there for 25 yrs, and hasn't been in the BWCA for 12, but will be back this summer. Since last there, my camping style has changed a bit (lighter mostly) and my meals tend to be home-made add hot water and let it sit to cook types (better tasting and cheaper than store bought freeze dried).

I am a little confused looking at the regulations regarding such foods. It states all food must be packaged in plastic. Does this mean you can't bring store bought freeze dried food packages (in foil) or the foil packaged tuna/chicken/salmon that is now available instead of in cans?

I've yet gone on a trip without a "leave no trace behind" attitude, and actually end up cleaning up others little scraps that they do leave behind, and rarely even make a fire. I certainly won't leave any litter behind this time either.

We always take foil packaged tuna with. We just pack it out as we would anything else.

There is no need to repackage from the freeze dried companies or items like Knorr's pasta or rice, Bear Creek soup, tuna or chicken in a pouch, Bisquick biscuits and etc.

The regs are for items that were purchased in glass or can form.

Also it helps to repackage items like hamburger helper or other boxed items to get rid of the volume.

As stated already, the ban is on glass and can food containers. So no glass bottles or jars and no cans (aluminum, tin , etc.).

Foil is fine. Any type of plastic is fine. Paper and cardboard is fine (though I wouldn't recommend it).

Sounds good (and reasonable) to me. Thanks for the help.

I really dont understand the whole thing about tin cans i guess. The way i look at it, as long as we pack out what we pack in, whats the big deal? Now i guess it would be that not all people would pack it out.

lets play the what if game:
What if last year the trip was going to be cold so we took 4 cans of Campbells Chicken Noodle Soup "just in case" and ended up using them on the last day, opened the cans, made the soup and took the cans out with us. No problem. What is the harm? Of course IF noone knows im sure we are fine, i just dont get it.

Now i totally understand glass, with the chance something breaks into small pieces then people who are at that site later cut their foot on it...that makes sense in my brain but just dont get the can part. I know it is lighter to use plastic so that is actually our benifit and not the DNR but does anyone understand that one and can help me out?
thanks

I think the rule about cans is really there for the few, not the many. A few people would just throw the empty cans in the bushes or lakes or try to burn them. In fact long ago the accepted rule was to sink the "tin" cans out in the lake or bury them. You can imagine what it would be like now with more and more people using the wilderness. I like not having cans allowed. Seems simple to me.

Marshal..if you saw the photos of the Boy Scouts back in the 60's with the many-many huge trash bags of cans and bottles they cleaned up from the camp and portages you would understand the "no" rule.