TOP 5 MMO GAMER GRUB

This is in response to my good friend Joel Tan's meme Top 5 MMO Gamer Grub.

Me and Joel go a long way and the grub he posted explains why in almost 17 years of gaming marathons from playing Dungeons & Dragons, to Robotech, to eventually Perfect World we never really ended up fighting about the food.

Here are my choices. Please note that before I was a blogger or a tech journalist, I spent four years as an assistant editor for a health magazine, so excuse the jargon and the tone.


1) Coffee. Black as night. No Cream. No Sugar. The dairy taste of cream might trigger sleepiness from your programming as a kid to drink warm milk before beddy-bye. Too much sugar and boom, your pancreas over reacts, and floods you with insulin--sugar crash. Good bye all energy reserves, hello pillow!

2) Water. Dehydration kills, and not taking any non-diuretic liquids while gaming eventually will. I try and have a bottle nearby to take a sip out of every now and then. Also helps when you burn your lips on the coffee mug. Taking controlled sips prevents having to go to the loo. The trick is to keep hydrated not over hydrate and cause a flush.

3) Ice diluted Mountain Dew. The water in the ice cuts the amount of sugar in Mountain Dew so as to prevent sugar crash. This is the alternative if it's too warm for coffee and the closest to actually drinking those "energy drinks" which contain too much caffeine and have too much chemicals and actually induces taking a wiz. Why Mountain Dew? It contains the most caffeine of all sodas, and is classic gamer fare in any platform.

4) Soda crackers. Take your pick, but make sure they are salty enough. The salt helps your body retain the liquids you take and its taste off-sets the sweetness of soda, the bitterness of coffee, or the blandness of water. The crackers also help calm the acids of your stomach.

5) Pizza. Easy to eat, easy to digest, filling, only one hand required. As simple as a sandwich, as filling as a hotdog. No cooking required and available 24/7.

Though I have mentioned five already, I would like to suggest carbo loading an hour or two before a game marathon. Not only does it provide long term energy reserves, but a raid on a full stomach just works better. A large plate of pasta with a heavy sauce, a substantial sandwich, or rice and your favorite savory viand should do the trick.

Check what the other peeps invited by Joel think: PJ Punla, Mon Macutay, Darrick Regondola, and Robert Sanchez.