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Eat Your Way to Gaming Awesomeness

Meet Gamer Grub, perhaps the most condescending food ever.

By John Gillooly on 3 October, 2008

Whenever I see beverages loaded with caffeine and aimed at the gamer market, I think back to the Counter-Strike LANs I used to attend, and the near obscene level of Jolt consumption that put the twitch back into twitch gaming. Energy drinks may be mainstream now, but gamers were the guinea pig market for such drinks for so long.

So, I was briefly excited (and then nauseated) when I came across a story on Kotaku about ‘Gamer Grub’ being named the official food of the World Cyber Games. Fascinated by what actually constitutes gamer food, I dutifully checked the web site. Let me get this off my chest now – gamer grub looks fucking disgusting and all it will serve to do is perpetuate the stereotype that gamers are, um, grubby.

Basically, the premise is take a disparate collection of nibbles, mix them up according to one of four gaming ‘themes’, and shove them into a container designed for the most efficient pouring down one’s gullet. This innovative consumption method leads to a scientistically proven 100% reduction in greasy hand-based performance loss.

It gets even more insulting. Apparently, Gamer Grub also enhances your gaming performance through Science. I know because the website has a page called Science, with a picture of an Atom, which is about as Science as one can get. Of course, the page just highlights the handful of vitamins and minerals that are associated with the dried fruit and nuts in the packages. But thanks to the wonders of Science this means the site can claim that:

Gamer Grub is a great tasting snack that boosts your core gaming systems – such as visual input, cognitive processing, signal transmission and muscle reflexes. Scientifically formulated with essential nutrients and vitamins, Gamer Grub provides a healthy, great tasting snack mix that supports fast reaction times for maximum gaming performance. Eat well and prosper.

I suppose the good news is that at least some of the flavours have a decent amount of healthy ingredients. Although, until this point I thought a core gaming system meant a console without a hard drive.

This massive development in multiplayer gullet-stuffing hasn’t yet translated into actual product. The plan is for the San Diego based company to start selling the product at retail and online starting from next year. Until then, expect to see the product turning up on desks, and floors, and maybe all down the front of gamer’s shirts at the World Cyber Games.