Chef Lu Bu is the kitchen manager for US gaming bar Battle and Brew. He is therefore something of an expert when it comes eating while gaming. Here are five suggestions from Lu Bu that can be eaten with one hand, don’t require much hand-eye coordination, and are residue-free to keep your controller nice ‘n’ shiny.
As any gamer knows, sating your appetite during a marathon gaming session can be a pretty difficult undertaking. The wrong type of snack will result in a gunk-smeared controller and crumbs all over the shop. And as much as we abhor the Cheetos stereotype, there’s a fairly good chance that your preferred gamer grub is either sugary, salty or both.
Chef Lu Bu has released a new game food guide offering some great snacking alternatives that will keep your controller and arteries in tip-top condition. (A word of warning, some of the suggestions involve fruit.)
See also: Gamer Grub Tells You Everything You Need To Know About How Marketers View Gamers
“What I’ve compiled is a list of great food to eat while playing videogames,” Lu Bu explains. “No-mess food that you can handle with one hand that won’t cause you to stop looking at the minimap and get ganked in the meantime. This is by no means a complete nor comprehensive list, but I think it’s a good list.”
Here are his top five suggestions:
- Grapes
- Nuts
- Hummus
- Carrots/Celery (great for dipping in hummus!)
- Tuna/Tuna sandwich
The above are Lu Bu’s personal favourites, but the guide contains stacks of recommendations to suit all tastes. You can check out the entire guide below:
Lu Bu’s Guide to Healthy Snacking While Gaming [Battle and Brew]
Comments
51 responses to “Top 5 One-Handed Gaming Snacks (That Are Actually Healthy)”
Hummus is A+. Especially with Jatz. Because I have to eat something kind of bad for me.
Hummus with carrot sticks is rad. Or Baba Ganuj.
So damn hungry now.
+ infinity – Especially Baba Ganuj! Is that how it’s spelt? I love that stuff so much
Am I the only person who never got into horfing down junkfood while I’m gaming? I always ate meals at appropriate times. When I do snack I make sure I don’t do it during a game.
Single player games can be paused, and multiplayer matches last 10-15 minutes on average. it’s not a long time to go without eating.
Yeah, I just don’t eat while playing either. This can lead to me skipping meals though but that’s another problem.
Just one more turn…….. and it’s 5am
La di da, look at you, Mr Sensible ;p
My consoles are placed in areas that allow a lot of breathing room to avoid overheating and are regularly wiped of all dust.
Ok now you are actually scaring me.
Next thing you’ll tell me is that you regularly update Java.
Yeah, never really do junk food myself. But there’s been plenty of times going around to a friend’s place with a bunch of others and there’d be a couple of bowls of chips or something out while we play, nothing wrong with a bit of social snacking 😛
I’m same, but because I like keeping my controllers clean.
I’m the same. Too easy to mindlessly eat too much if you aren’t concentrating. Also, it forces you to take the occasional break.
MMOs can involve much longer periods with little or no downtime.
On one occasion when I was playing Everquest I played for close to 20 hours straight, with just a couple of quite short breaks. (The cleric has to be on their toes pretty much all the time in an MMO if you’re not in a safe spot.)
These days I keep a small refrigerator on my computer desk. I’m frequently surprised that more people don’t do this. It completely eliminates those “afk drink” breaks…
I… don’t know that hummus really fits the bill. Any kind of dip is a hazard, you don’t want to have something that could easily slop off and make a mess everywhere especially if you’re likely to only be half paying attention to what you’re doing/trying to do it quick.
Also carrots can be kind of juicy and give you juice and residue on your fingers/controller.
Here’s a solution 😀
http://worth1000.s3.amazonaws.com/submissions/10748000/10748485_58a6_1024x2000.jpg
Tuna sandwich? Gross, and messy. Sliced up pieces of non-juicy fruit (like apples, firm peaches, strawberries) and dried fruit are great.
Yeah…. not exactly right.
Almonds are the healthiest option for nuts.
Bread is terrible for you and is jam packed with sugar so a tuna sandwich is a bad idea.
Id replace grapes with strawberries.
Replace hummus with a salsa making sure to watch the salt levels.
Another great option is the plain chobani yogurt. Zero sugar and fat but high in protien. It fills you up fast too.
Bread is not terrible for you. It’s just something to have in moderation.
What’s your definition of moderation? People it bread everyday and they really shouldn’t. Everyone is so concerned about fat in food when in fact it’s the carbs thay are killing everyone’s weight loss.
Carbs themselves are not inherently bad. Rice, pasta and other high carb foods are staples in many diets. I tend to have at least one serve of carbs (cup of rice/two slices of bread) in every meal I eat.
More often than not, diet is more complicated than “eat less X”.
Diets are exactly that haha. Eat less x eat more y. Macro and micro need to be in check. Carbs are the pillars of a good diet. Im talking brown rice. Oats. Sweet potatoes etc.
I don’t know your bf% , your daily workload or routine so it would be improper of me to make any kind of assumption on your diet. You may be an ectomorph with a labor intensive job and are able to burn through empty carbs.
I have a fairly sedentary lifestyle with no current exercise routine. Despite that, I’d say I don’t have any weight issues (I tend to sit somewhere in the 63-67kg range).
Diet is definitely more than just “eat less X, eat more Y”. For one thing, that doesn’t take into account what the person is currently eating. Diet is also things like eating habits and quality of food.
Dieting in a nutshell for just weightloss means you need to be in a caloric defecit. Which does mean eat less carbs and less bad fats. Eat more proteins and good fats.
Eating habits absolutely come into the equation and it is essential to not skip meals. Your body is a furnace and we gotta keep feeding it fuel or it stops burning. Most of the time fat people starve them selves all through the day and then blow out with one big meal or a big weekend. The body is in starvation mode and hangs on to all the food coming in.
You are by no means fat in that picture and if you’re happy with how you look and you feel healthy than by all means you’re doing better than most of us haha.
EDIT: Wont let me reply to you.
I am not disagreeing with what you are saying. I was keeping it general as it is a gaming forum not a health and fitness discussion group.
They key issue here is that for most people carbs are in fact over eaten.
Diet isn’t just weight loss. That’s the important thing to keep in mind here. Sure, if you’re trying to lose weight you’ll want to have foods with better calorific bang for your buck.
If you’re trying to gain or maintain weight, you’re going to take a different approach. That’s still all part of maintaining your diet.
This is why a general approach of “carbs are bad” seems like nonsense to me. Carbs are bad in specific weight loss regimes. They’re also good in moderation if you’re just trying to maintain a generally balanced diet. If you’re on a high energy diet for things like sports, high carbs can be a complete godsend.
So, like I’ve been saying from the start, it’s just not as simple as “eat less X”.
Wooo woooooooooo 😉
Excuse me, but I must have your t-shirt. MUST.
Here you go.
There are some other great shirts on that site. So glad that they opened the back catalog up.
Bread is jam packed with sugar? You’re getting the wrong kind of bread, son.
Or do you mean in that they’re packed full of carbs..which are technically saccharides…because I interpretted this as sugar like KFC’s buns…
http://www.calorieking.com.au/foods/calories-in-bread-sunblest-soft-white-all-varieties_f-Y2lkPTQyMzI3JmJpZD03MzEmZmlkPTkzMDgmcGFyPQ.html i meant carbs as a whole. Thats for TWO slices.
The link defaults to a mini-loaf, 400g. Which says 9.6g of sugars. The more reasonable 74g serve (two sandwich slices of 700g loaf) has 1.8g of sugars.
Considering that white bread in general is high in sugar, I don’t see this as very damning.EDIT: A quick look through some wholegrain options also gives about ~2g of sugars per serve.
all food can be one handed if you cut it up small enough
And that includes spaghetti bolognase lol
… or put it in a blender!
Um, this article needs a different image of the man featured in this article, because this image has him standing in front of doritos & mountain dew, due to a previous article by bashcraft about the disgusting combination of the 2, i can not unsee this combination & bashcraft’s words about this combination. Plz find another image so that i can have dreams not about the combination of mountain dew & doritoes
I LOVE Doritos and Mountain Jew. Or with Pepsi MAX. In any case, good combo.
I’m more of a Kosher-Cola type of guy.
ALL HAIL THE DORITO POPE.
You there! Hail him!
Me?!
One handed hummus? Like, you dip your hand in the jar and lick it off your fingers?
My one-handed-gaming-snack is the trusty old banana.
Dip your controller/mouse and lick it clean.
Well that makes a lot more sense actually!
One handed tuna?
No un salted pop corn ?
The bizarre thing about Doritos is that they can make Doritos with all the same flavour but without the powdery stuff on it. They have made their product in such a way that their target market shouldn’t be interested, yet still are.
Not exactly what I would call a “No mess, one handed” gaming foods list. Hummus is a dip so you need something else to go with it and then you need to dip lightly otherwise you will spill or drip everywhere. Eating it straight is fine until you start getting to the bottom and need to hold the bowl/plate. Nuts need to be non-salted and even then, most of them are probably going to have a coating of dust or oil on them that will accumulate. Although things like Pepitas tend to be pretty clean. A tuna sandwich is the worst on that list because not only is it unhealthy (Bread makes you fat!), bread crumbs will get everywhere, not to mention Tuna juice if you didn’t drain it properly and bits tend to fall out of the sides if you hold it wrong.
Generally you want something that’s easy to hold, doesn’t take more than one or two bites to eat, doesn’t require any utensils and isn’t juicy or wet. My additions to the list would be cherry tomatoes, Cos Lettuce leaves, mushrooms, capsicum pieces, apples, those kinds of things.
i disagree…bread does not make you fat. laziness makes you fat if you’re lazy don’t eat bread if you exercise eat what you want and be in a caloric defecit
I take a bath with Mtn Dew and eat grilled steak with Doritos while playing.
Seriously, What was suggested is basically EXACTLY what I eat when i’m playing games, watching films, doing work etc. it’s not like i don’t eat junk food, I just don’t want to feel like garbage after i do something that shouldn’t make me feel like garbage. One thing though; whilst i really like these choices, different people have different tastes – and this is what i find the determining factor – so why do lists like these frequently remove the pleasure gained from eating as of it is no consideration whatsoever? Pleasure in moderation is good for us and we know it, so why is it almost a non-factor in every article?
Snacking rectally is hands free.
As mentioned above, I have never felt the need to snack while playing games, I am usually too involved in the game.
That picture has given me an excuse to post this *stifles a grin* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW4kaQk50Vo
Carrots are great, and can go with any dip you’d normally use for crackers and chips.