Top 10 Places to Find Free Snacks

Snacks: we eat them all the time… sometimes until no room remains for actual meals. But the term “snack” means different things to different people. While most of us agree that a snack is smaller and less filling than a meal, some would consider a Starbucks Frappuccino a snack, while others might opt for a pack of edamame or a half-order of buffalo wings. No matter what brings us individual snacking pleasure, there’s one other thing most people tend to agree on: snacks are even tastier when they’re free.

As a former poor college student, and a cheapskate in general, I’ve become somewhat of an expert in finding free food. Some of what I’ve found over the years has been atrocious, but I’ve found a fair amount of four-and-five star snacking destinations also. Below, I’ve compiled a list of my top ten places to find free snacks. My rankings are based on several factors including free snack variety, quality, and ubiquity of locations. May your taste buds be satisfied, and your stomach - and wallet - never empty!

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Top 10 Cinematic Snack Moments

Snacks and movies go hand-in-hand. If I’m watching a movie and my lap isn’t covered in popcorn grease, then something is seriously amiss.

And this got me thinking. Since snacks are such an integral part of the cinematic experience, there must be movies that actually feature them, right? Right!

So, Snackerrific readers, after a few hours of haphazard research, I give to you: The Top 10 Cinematic Snack Moments!

Check them out after the jump.

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Top 10 Gas Station Snacks

Gas. Oil. Water.

Forty years ago, gas stations were called service stations, and that’s what you got. You’d sit in your car and the attendant would fill ‘er up with gas, check the oil and water, chat about the weather, you’d fork over a few bucks and then ease on down the road.

Today you can still get gas, oil and water for your car, but so much more for yourself! The possibilities are endless! Space and time are limited here, so enjoy the TOP TEN SNACKS you can find in a gas station. This list is certainly not definitive, but it’s based on my years of careful observation as a trained, professional snack critic.

In college I worked behind the counter at a gas station for half a summer, and the only person I ever saw eat pickled eggs was a homeless guy named Wig who washed them down with 40 oz. bottles of malt liquor. Maybe there’s a “Wig” in every neighborhood, ’cause someone’s eating these things. I’ve heard they’re popular in midwestern taverns, so maybe you have to be pickled yourself to properly enjoy them.

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Snack Review: J&D’s Bacon Salt

Bacon Salt. Their motto is “everything should taste like bacon.” Who could argue with that?

And, now that you mention it, I thought, not enough snacks taste like bacon. I proposed to solve this problem by ordering all three flavors of Bacon Salt and applying them to the snack which most needs to have salt added to it: freshly popped popcorn. After all, if butter is good on popcorn, the odds seem pretty good that it would be even better with the flavor of one of the few fats that is more delicious than butter: the fine, fine fat of our friend the pig.

When my Bacon Salt arrived, I opened the package and then the first jar with great anticipation. I took a deep whiff. Because what’s better than the fragrance of bacon?

Well, not the smell of Bacon Salt. The bad news was that the smell of Bacon Salt was distinctly familiar, but not because it smelled like bacon. It’s because it smells like Pup-peroni.

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Review: BumbleBee’s Spicy Thai Tuna Medley

Deserved or not, canned snacks have a pretty gut-churning reputation.

Just visualize poking your index finger through a metal ring and pealing back the lid of an aluminum can - what food do you see jiggling before you?

Is it anchovies, lined up in a row like soldiers in a trench, their shiny black eyes staring into an unknowable abyss? Or is it Spam, the reigning king of gelatinous meat products - a food so simultaneously revolting and alluring that I felt compelled to write about it TWICE this week? Or hey, maybe you’ve just imagined cat food, since that recent inheritance wasn’t quite what you’d been hoping for. (I guess you should’ve sent Grandpa Pete better birthday cards, huh?)

Incidentally, cat food is probably the first thing you’ll think of when you see an open can of BumbleBee’s Tuna Medley. BUT WAIT, KEEP READING! ‘Cause actually, they’re kind of good.

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