Having hiked the AT end to end and traveled by bike both travelers tend to "live off the land" - meaning you now buy what you can find without making the search for food greater than the journey itself. When the first folks started hiking the AT, America was a much friendlier place and more of an agricultural society- I am not talking AgriBiz but rural family farms. A hiker could knock on someone's door and buy a few eggs, ask to sleep in a barn, etc. Water was clean and abundant -- we used to carry a folding cup and drink from streams in ignorant bliss. We also had a local IGA in our little town in Northwest CT (actually 3 Mom & Pop stores in 29 square miles) but the big grocery stores were 15 miles or more away. The local stores stocked everything, but you paid a price. They really were the first "convenience stores". I could stop at these stores on a bicycle and buy anything I needed, meat, cheese, fresh produce. Sometimes you had to go next door to the meat market and they would cut or grind you a personalized size piece of meat. About the only prepackaged food was cans of Chef Boyardee stuff, Spam, Vienna Sausages, Sardines, etc.
Things have changed in the last 50 years. In an effort to preserve and protect the AT it was moved from the valleys to the mountain ridges since it was more remote and cheaper to buy the corridor land. It also made hiking and resupply more difficult. For biking the same thing happened in a way with the introduction of the interstate system and the massive spread of the automobile. We were a family of 5 in rural America with one car, which my Dad typically drove to work. If my mother needed the car she had to get up and drive my father to and from work. Shopping was done on Thursday night and stores and banks stayed open late, since this was also typically pay day. Now everyone has a car, small town stores are disappearing, replaced first by the box store chains and now Amazon. Wendell Berry wrote a book predicting this in 1977 and it sadly has proved true
The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture. https://www.amazon.com/Unsettling-America-Culture-Agriculture/dp/0871568772My point is that most of the Mom & Pop stores are gone, replaced gas stations that now sell milk, eggs if you are lucky, and prepackaged food. Even the "fresh" sandwiches were made yesterday and trucked in from somewhere else. When hiking, if you stayed at a hiker hostel, the host would typically make a grocery store run, free or for a profit, but you used that as an opportunity to get some fresh food. When planning a bike trip I try to get to a "real" grocery store every other day and I keep note of the Super WalMarts on the route for rest days, so you can get fresh food and gear in one stop. I will always "buy local" when I can, but buying food at a chain owned gas station to me is no different than shopping at Walmart or Amazon.
Everyone's dietary needs are different - I have learned to listen to my body. Hikers chow down on ice cream because they typically carry no dairy. Burgers, because it is cheap fresh meat. I tend to eat what I crave and limit my candy intake to 1 Snickers bar a day.
