Being the gamers and LAN goers that we are, we often sacrifice a good meal for a quick snack and more gaming time. Usually, it's more than our physical health that pays the price, it's also the health of our equipment. When we heard that a company had designed a snack food particularly for gamers, of course we were excited to check it out. Promises of no crumbs and grease transfer were appealing, but after checking out the product in-depth, we learned how much more it offered.
Gamer Grub is a line of snack mixes that are crafted specifically for gamers, in taste, convenience, and even vitamins to enhance performance. The product was created by PC enthusiasts just like you and me who saw a need for something more friendly to snack on. Unable to find anything, the founders of Gamer Grub decided to make their own. Based out of California, we've graciously received a few samples to try for ourselves.
Product Name: Gamer Grub
Review Sample Provided by: Gamer Grub
Review and Pictures by: Adam
Packaging
Each flavor of Gamer Grub comes packaged in a foil-like bag with some nice graphics showing off the ingredients of the mix. The bag is designed to look high-tech, with the bottom and the 'Tear N Tilt' top resembling metal from a spacecraft. Perhaps obvious from the name, the opening of Gamer Grub is designed for easy distribution, allowing you to pour into your hand, your mouth, or maybe on your mouse pad. Blasphemy, right? Maybe not as much as you'd expect.
Performance
So what's in Gamer Grub that makes it a superior choice to other snacks? First, vitamins. Absent in other popular choices such as Cool Ranch Doritos (http://www.fritolay.com/our-snacks/doritos-cool-ranch-chips.html), Vitamin A and B3 are both found in the Grub. Vitamin A helps in the translation of visual data signals to your brain, while Niacin, or B3, helps to maintain muscle tone and the health of the nervous system and eyes. Both vitamins help you to interpret what it is you're seeing (such as a sniper hidden in the grass), keep you calm (as you train your crosshair on him), and ensures you're doing it for a good, long time (meaning you can still pull off that headshot at the age of 64).
Vitamin E is a common ingredient even in other snacks, reducing cell damage that can be caused by toxins in your body. L-Glutamic acid is also present in Gamer Grub, which has everything to do with impluse and the excitatory transmission. Again, those fans of 'twitch' titles such as Modern Warfare 2 will appreciate the ehancements to nerves and impluse reaction when under the pressure of a firefight. One will also find Magnesium mixed in, which is an ingredient that over 300 reactions that take place in your body relies on.
The last component, Choline, increases nerve structure integrity, the transmission which travels this system being that which is used fo muscle reactions. So again, your ability to physically react to an opponent is enhanced.
Hearing that simply eating a snack can improve game performance is no doubt appealing, but just as important is the taste. This is a pretty subjective area to judge, but thankfully Gamer Grub has spefic flavors they're aiming for that can be compared.
I received two of the four available flavors to try, the Pizza and the Peanut Butter and Jelly. Also available are Wasabi and Chocolate. Remember, Gamer Grub is a snack mix, so you're not going to be eating a cereal-like puff that's artificially flavored. These are actual ingredients mixed to meet the desired flavor.
In PB&J, you'll get a blend of sweet bread pieces, obviously for the bread, peanut butter chips and actual peanuts for the 'peanut' aspect, and strawberries as well as strawberry jelly chips for the 'jelly'. Fans of grape jelly sandwiches may be a little disappointed, but the flavor choice doesn't affect the overall experience. Pouring a handful of the mix into my hand and tossing it in my mouth, if really does taste like a PB&J. And not only a PB&J, but a good one. The mix also provides a variety of textures and crunch, which a great addition.
Pizza is a favorite at LAN parties, the grease that ruins our equipment, not so much. Pita chips and sesame sticks help create the crust experience, with the tomato and cheese taste covered by tomato almonds and cheese curls (awesome). An overall pizza taste is further achieved with pizza cashews, as well as a fried onions that serve as some seasoning as well as topping choice. With onions not being the most popular choice for pizza-goers, it does mix well with the tomato taste. Still, it would have been nice to see a pepperoni aspect.
Finally, the let's look at the effect of eating over your equipment. The nature of the snack itself already does wonder for cleanliness: since you're not taking a partial bite of a brittle chip, everything goes in your moth and not on the keyboard. The pieces are also much less greasy, so you won't see near as much transfer. This also means that less crumbs are likely to hitch a ride on your greased-fingers to fall off in beween keys. And since you're not eating a snack comprised of a medium (such as tortilla chips) coated in a flavor powder, your fingers avoid the cheesy, grime-covered syndrome, which your mouse and keyboard will appreciate.
Overall
Gamer Grub has a great taste, enhances performance, and helps to extend the life of your equipment. It also comes in four favorite flavors to match your taste, and achieves it using actual ingredients. Gamer Grub is available for order online, at retailers such as ThinkGeek.com for $3.99 per package, or $8.99 for a three-pack, which is pretty fair considering the price of normal chips and the amount of CO2 used for preserving the fragile chip (absent in Gamer Grub, the bag is filled to the top). Gamer Grub is also starting to be carried at local retailers, such as Hot Topic, Fry's, and Barnes & Noble. My advice? Ditch that bag of cheese puffs, wash your hands, and head over to a retailer to introduce yourself to a new level of snacking and gaming.
