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Performance Enhancing Grub - Gamer Grub By: PoisonRamune, the Apathetic Lizardman A few months ago I heard about a snack mix specifically made for gamers called Gamer Grub. While I’ve been meaning to do some sort of article on it; I never got around to picking any up for a review, since traveling 20+ miles to my local Fry’s for a $5 bag of trail mix seemed like a waste. Luckily, we were actually able to score some while up at PAX (special thanks to home girl, Miriam for not liking strawberry fruit snack type stuff and donating her Gamer Grub). After doing some research on Gamer Grub (since I’m not just going to ingest something without reading up on it, aside from street drugs), I’ve found that it’s basically trail mix with a theme flavor (peanut butter & jelly, pizza, chocolate, or wasabi) that’s fortified with vitamins and minerals. “Boost your Game! Gamer Grub is a great tasting snack mix packed with select vitamins and neurotransmitters supporting fast cognitive performance” says both the product packaging and blurb on the website. Along with the claims of improving your in-game performance, the snack mix is also touted as being virtually mess free offering no greasy hands and no keyboard crumbs.
While many other gaming/tech sites have reviewed Gamer Grub, they mostly seemed to have just sampled the “beta” edition of the snack mix (and yes, the people who made this stuff actually called their first run of the product a Beta Distro) and seemed more focused on poking fun at the general idea of the product. I, on the other hand, am more interested in actually reviewing the overall effectiveness of the product and how good it tastes. After playing a few action games while eating the Gamer Grub under various conditions (drunk, stoned, sober) and doing numerous “control” play sessions without the Gamer Grub; I’m led to believe that Gamer Grub does near nothing to raise your potential to play a video game better. There was only one counter instance of this when I had eaten a serving’s worth of Gamer Grub while very drunk and began to play Triggerheart Exelica. During that session I felt very awake and nearly sober; however, I want to say that this had more to do with the fact that I had eaten nothing throughout the day and probably any food at that point would have yielded the same result. In all honesty, I couldn’t really see a product like this working as they claim, since most of the time you begin to feel the effects of food several hours after ingesting it (unless it’s mostly made up of simple sugars). Though Gamer Grub doesn’t work like a nerd version of Popeye’s spinach, it does taste pretty good. The peanut butter and jelly mix we got to sample consisted of: peanuts, peanut butter chips, strawberry fruit snack/dried fruit bits, and peanut sized bread pieces. It had a flavor much like standard trail mix, rather than a peanut butter sandwich (but honestly, what flavored snack food really tastes like the flavor it’s trying to emulate?) and had a sort of weird airy texture which I gather was from the bread pieces. One thing I will note is that this stuff is pretty filling. You obviously can’t make this stuff a meal (well, you could, but you’d probably hate yourself for doing so), but it is one of those snacks where a fistful will keep you good on food for awhile. I was quite surprised that the serving suggestion of ¼ cup of mix was actually a decently substantial snack. For the record, Gamer Grub does live up to one of its claims; it is a pretty clean snack. While I never really think about controller grease or crumbs on my keyboard (mostly because I don’t try to eat fried chicken and other impractical finger foods while gaming or working), I can see how having a cleaner snack like this would be a godsend for those who can’t be pulled away from their desks.
I have very mixed feelings overall when it comes to this product. On one hand, I appreciate the fact that someone made a snack food for gamers; even including inside jokes from gaming culture on the packaging, such as having “RTFM” (Read the fucking manual) along with the serving suggestion printed near the “tear to open” tab on the bag. However, on the same note it also seems like the creators of Gamer Grub are subtly mocking anyone who feels that they would need purchase this snack mix. A lot of the literature on the package and the website comes off as “gamers would have never been able to figure out how to have a snack had it not been for their product,” but as we all know from the obese nerds in our lives that this is entirely untrue. I’m also very disappointed in the fact that my brain didn’t explode with molten awesome to the point where I made all the people on Xbox Live cower in awe of me after eating a handful of this, but then again I guess I really don’t need a snack food to make me awesome anyway. It’s hard for me to recommend this, especially when it doesn’t really do one of the things it claims. With the high price point of $5 for just over 5 ozs, you’re honestly better off buying a bag of beef jerky or bulk popcorn (unless you really want a semi-expensive nut mix and it’s no where near the Christmas season).
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