Best Road Trip Snacks

Essential Road Trip Snacks

These are the best road trip snacks, backed by science (kind of). Road trips are already stressful so why add cheese dust and greasy fingers to the mix? With this list of essential snacks you'll be sure to keep the miles (and smiles) rolling for hours.

As someone, who for 22 years only exclusively traveled on the ground, I've had plenty of time to deliberate on what the perfect grouping of gas station snacks are. This list covers the essentials, proteins, carbs, sugar, caffeine, and cheese.

If you're like me road trips are usually reserved for summer time and destinations are typically somewhere warm. Why not start your morning with a cold caffeinated beverage? Monster, the company that hydrates local Kyles and Chads has a line of canned coffee. Caffe Monster (has a luxurious ring to it, no?) offers a rather extensive selection of flavors. You'll find most stores only sell 2; Mean Bean and Loca Moca. Either one is a good choice but I recommend getting one of each. For coffee lovers, they're a little bitter, for skeptics, they're plenty sweet and chocolaty. Yeah you could get other kinds of ice coffee but can you honestly say you'd look cooler with any other brand in your hand? No way (tahaha sick bro). These coffees will have you full, no need for breakfast.

A few hours pass, your stomach starts to rumble and you reach for the chips, the Cheetos, no. You reach for the Combos. This is where the science come into play. Tell me what other snack is more structurally stable than a Combo? Impossible. They are dense thanks to their pretzel and cracker exterior. I (as well as many Nobel Prize-winning scientists) maintain that there is no cleaner snack. They don't crumble or shed cheese dust and you won't be sticky. They fly under the radar but did you know that Charles Francis Richter, inventor of the Richter Scale, deemed Combos the only snack that can hold up to earthquakes. The standard cheese flavor is good but if you want to achieve greatness, go with the pizza flavor.

Absolutely no trip is worth taking if you don't have some some sort of beef jerky. Literally ANY beef jerky is fine. I'm talking in a bag, sticks, links, cubed, shredded. Any will do. It's really not that greasy (unless its in stick form, Slim Jim, I'm talking about you). The only drawback is price, something I hoped Bernie Sanders could remedy. A standard bag of beef jerky runs you $8.00+ almost anywhere I go. If you're balling on a budget, stick with Slim Jims.

Can you guess the last snack? Colorful, sweet, great commercials, shares a name with a rap artist? Back in 1941 I know the Mars Company was looking forward to being a prestigious list such as this. The last essential snack, M&M's. There is delicious candy and there is candy that won't melt in your hand. M&M's combine those two factors. They have flavors for everyone, I've even had jalapeno peanut M&M's and they blew my mind. These, like the Combos, are scientifically superior. M&M's have been to space, astronauts have been eating them above our heads for years. That brings a lot of clout to the table, more so than something like a jellybean or Skittles could ever have. I'm not including Skittles because they are dangerous, they can rip out a filling.

This list will save your drive. Please let me know what other snack items you think should've made it on the list and I'll tell you why you're wrong.