Starving But Can’t Pause Your Game? Here’s What I, A Hardcore Gamer, Eat As Gaming Snacks

Gaming snacks for solo and multiplayer sessions

I grew up spending every available hour gaming through my schooling days. I’ve spent thousands of hours on games like the Counter-Strike series, DOTA, Maplestory, and Valorant. I’m a highkey extrovert, so socialising in school alone was not enough for me. Video games opened up my social circle, they gave me a chance to socialise with people from other parts of the world, and forged friendships that have lasted more than a decade for me. At the same time, I’ve also learnt how to speak a few other languages; I’m not fluent, but I definitely know the curse words. Whenever I wasn’t screaming at my computer monitor, destroying keyboards, multiple mice, and spending all my angpao money on @cash, I was always looking for gaming snacks I could eat without disrupting my 16-hour session. Food that I can get away with eating without getting my hands greasy were the perfect snacks, so that’s a big NO to burgers and pizzas.

Here is a list of gamer food that you can eat while you wait to respawn:

Potato Chips

Gaming snacks - chips — *Credit: @joos_kitchen*

Potato chips are the PERFECT snack, if you eat them with chopsticks. Potato chips come in so many different flavours; you can have your classic Sour Cream & Onion, BBQ, or Hot & Spicy chips.

My personal favourite is Meadows’ Truffle Chips. It has the most earthy and accurate truffle flavouring on a chip. Plus, a bag only costs $1! WHAT A STEAL. It almost felt like a race for me, trying to stuff the chip into my mouth and having time to buy weapons in Valorant at the start of every round.

One tip I got from a friend was to crush up the chips and pour it into your mouth. I prefer crunching through a whole chip rather than risk shards of them stabbing my gums. But you do you.

Air-Fried Snacks

The options are unlimited and it’s as simple as just popping them into the air-fryer, and picking them up at the half-time of your gaming sessions. I love having nuggets, seaweed chicken, and even KFC’s Cheese Fries while I play games.

Personally, Tay Crispy Chicken with Seaweed is my favourite. I love seaweed and I love a good crispy chicken. Dipped in SPECIFICALLY Kewpie Mayo, they brought me to heaven and I would get brought back to reality with the losing game I had, trying desperately for a comeback while flaming my team for being noobs.

Rice

I can still hear my mother shouting over my headphones “COME AND EAT DINNER NOW!” and me shouting back “I’m in the middle of my game, later!” Well, sometimes I just ended up bringing over my entire bowl of rice and dishes. I could eat my fried egg, steamed fish, and stir-fried vegetables all with one spoon and not let my meals disrupt my nonstop rampage on my opponents.

I could get a full balanced meal sitting just in front of my keyboard, not getting in the way of me pressing the button for voice comms to shout “P*tanginamo” to my team.

Fruits

Vitamin D is also dubbed the “sunshine vitamin”. If you’re a hardcore gamer and you don’t touch grass (you probably should occasionally), you can get Vitamin D from bananas and oranges. I grew up eating fruits almost daily; they’re full of nutrients and most of them taste pretty good. I know oranges are a mess to eat but you can juice them and get Vitamin C!

Bananas are simple; you just need a toothpick, a fork or anything stabby and you’re good to go. Bananas give you magnesium to activate the vitamin D in your body, and they give a huge energy boost so you can prolong your toxic gaming sessions.

Sushi

Once, I forgot to stop queueing for a match so I left my room to collect my GrabFood order of a Genki Sushi platter. I later realised that I was in a “Agent Selection” screen when I went back into my room to grab my phone.

Obviously, I wasn’t going to risk an “AFK warning” so I brought the sushi platter into my room. That event made sushi one of my favourite things to have when I’m gaming. You get a large variety of flavours, you can pick them up with chopsticks, and most types of sushi can be eaten in a single bite! I just had to pop one in every time I died in-game or right before the round started.

If you find stepping away from your desk an inconvenience to your gaming sessions, stock up on some of these foods and you’ll only need to get up for a few minutes. However, don’t forget to touch grass sometimes and get the right nutrition, or your opponents will be teabagging you on your grave.

My personal favourites would be Don Don Donki’s Aburi Mentai Salmon sushi (get it in the evening to snatch it up at a discounted price), Genki Sushi’s platters, and Sushi Express’ takeout platters!