How Do You Eat Trail Mix?

I get a bit peckish every day around 11:00 and 3:00.

For years, I’ve addressed this by eating a few pieces of candy at those times. But recently I’ve started trying a new variation on this method: I mixed together some nuts, M&Ms, and Reeses Pieces into a homebrew trail mix. It’s delicious–I scoop out a combination of all three, toss it in my mouth, and mash it all together.

I mentioned this to a few friends today, and I was surprised to learn that some people eat trail mix in a completely different way. Several of them said that when they take a handful of trail mix, they hold it in their hand and eat individual pieces.

This blew my mind. To each their own, but my initial reaction was that this defeats the point of trail mix. It’s a MIX of different treats, and it’s the combination of them eaten at the same time that makes it delicious.

They explained that they like the variety, surprise, and choice offered by each handful. They pointed out that unlike, say, a Snicker’s bar, the ingredients in trail mix are easily separated, allowing you to pick and choose what you want.

While this isn’t my way of eating trail mix, I now understand their perspective. I’m curious: How do you eat trail mix?

10 thoughts on “How Do You Eat Trail Mix?”

  1. Not quite the same thing as reported below, but close.

    I’ve been surprised to find that if I want to have, say, cranberry sauce on a sandwich, but for some reason end up adding it to my mouth very speedily immediately after taking a bite of the unsauced sandwich, the taste is never quite the same as when the sauce is already on the sandwich when I take a bite.

    Ever since early childhood, I’ve wondered what goes on in the minds of other people, so it’s satisfying to learn that someone else thinks about such things!

    Reply
    • Dorothy: That’s a really interesting point, and I can definitely relate to it. Somehow certain ingredients are just better when they’re pre-combined.

      Reply
  2. Neither – one or two pieces selected at random individually – More or less the same way I eat raisins or peanuts, though without knowing if my next couple will be two raisens, two peanuts, or one of each. It’s a mix of things that lasts me a while, consumed one nibble at a time, for me.

    Reply
    • Stephen: So you like the combo? When I eat M&Ms by themselves, I do that subconsciously–I’ll pair different colors together and plan ahead for the next pair.

      Reply
  3. I definitely like to have a handful of trail mix with a little bit of everything in it! I will say though that I try to limit the ratio of raisins to everything else… they usually put too many raisins compared to the nuts or M&Ms so I just give the extra raisins to my daughter 🙂

    And speaking of quirky ways to eat snacks, my wife HAS to eat skittles in pairs of the same color. She will not mix colors under any circumstance and whatever single colors are left at the end, she will throw back in the bag, shake it around, and grab a new handful. So Jamey, your friends may not be so bad after all! 🙂

    Reply
    • Yeah, raisin’s aren’t even a factor in my trail mix…too gummy. 🙂

      Ha ha…that’s great about the Skittles. I’m similar to that with M&Ms, though I want different colors instead of the same (even though I know the flavor isn’t different).

      Reply
  4. Although I’m really picky about food touching on my plate (I map out my holiday dinner plates to specifically avoid certain foods touching each other), the whole point of trail mix for me is experiencing different flavor profiles from mixing up the individual components into a single handful. If I wanted to eat the items separately, I wouldn’t buy them in a mix!

    Reply

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