Observed annually on August 31, National Trail Mix Day honors the mix that was developed as a healthy snack to be taken along on hikes.
One claim to the invention is held by two California surfers, who in 1968 blended peanuts and raisins together for an energy snack. However, in the 1958 novel The Dharma Bums written by Jack Kerouac, trail mix is mentioned when the two main characters describe the planned meals in preparation for their hiking trip.
- Trail mix is a combination of dried fruit, grains, nuts, and sometimes chocolate, developed as a snack food to be taken along on outdoor hikes.
- Trail mix is considered an ideal snack food for hikes, because it is tasty, lightweight, easy to store, and nutritious, providing a quick boost from the carbohydrates in the dried fruit and/or granola, and sustained energy from the mono- and polyunsaturated fats in nuts.
- The recipe for trail mix is most likely European in origin, where it has been known as a snack under various names in various countries since the 17th century.
- Trail mix has been eaten by Native Americans for thousands of years, and originally included buffalo meat.
- The combination of nuts, raisins and chocolate as a trail snack dates at least to the 1910s, when outdoorsman Horace Kephart recommended it in his popular camping guide.
- In Australia and New Zealand they call trail mix Scroggin.
- Trail mix is also called GORP (Good Old Raisins and Peanuts or Granola, Oats, Raisins, and Peanuts)
- According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the verb gorp, means “to eat greedily”.
In Germany, Poland, Hungary and several other European countries, trail mix is called “student food” or “student snack” in the local languages. In New Zealand, trail mix is known as “scroggin” or “schmogle”. The term is also used in some places in Australia but usage has only been traced back to the 1970s. Some claim that the name stands for sultanas, carob, raisins, orange peel, grains, glucose, imagination, and nuts or alternatively sultanas, chocolate, raisins and other goody-goodies including nuts; but this may be a false etymology.
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