PowerBar!

I'm sitting here looking at the contents of my lunch bag. It holds the same contents every day; A couple of peanut butter sandwiches, some granola bards, and two PowerBar 'Protien Plus' mean replacement bars. I heard some of the guys in the office talking about going to lunch together. They go all the  time. I don't go with them. My route is across town from them, and I eat in my truck, usually while I work on this very blog. Besides, I have these sandwiches and 'meal replacement' bars.
'Meal replacement'. See, that sounds pretty good, that name. Hearing it always puts me in mind of that gum featured in the movie Willy Wonka & the  Chocolate Factory, the gum that's snatched up and subsequently eaten (against the advice of Mr. Wonka, I'd like to remind you!) by Violet Beauregarde. She tastes tomato soup, roast beef and a baked potato, and it's as real to her as if she were eating the meal in a fine restaraunt. Of course it all goes awry when the desert comes, and the blueberry pie fills her with blueberry juice. She swells and swells until she's eventually rolled away by the ever-present Oohmpa Loohmpas.
Not a bad feat, for a little piece of gum.  A whole meal, all going along perfectly until that little glitch at the end there, and even the glitch was delicious, according to Violet.

Now, let us take a look at my 'meal replacement bar'. Unlike Willy's gum, these bars actually claim to replace full meals. I have to admit, they are pretty filling for their size, but what about the taste? I mean, mud would be filling, but it would taste like, well, mud. Let's look at the ingredients listed on my PowerBar, and see how delicious it sounds!

• Soy Protein Isolate
• Um... okay...
• Whey Protein Isolate
• Well, alright. One question. What does 'isolate' taste like? Is it fruity or nutty?
• Calcium  Casinate
• Hey, at least it's not an 'isolate', right? Silver lining, right there...

Hmm... There are a lot of things listed on the back of this bar. I'll tell you what, I'll skip about a bit and just give you a sample of the listed ingredients.

• Maltitol Syrup
• Okay, it's syrup, but I'm pretty sure I'd smack you in the back of the head if you poured it over my pancakes.
• Natural Flavor
• Right. Natural Flavor. Right. Uh... flavored like what?
• Soy Lecithin
• You lost me at 'Soy'.
• Ferrous Fumarate
• Copper Gluconate
• Chromium Aspartate
• Um... what?

Okay, I quit. I have no idea what's in this thing. Maybe that's the reason that, unlike Violet raving about the ultimate tastiness of Wonka's gum, when people ask me how my PowerBar is I kind of squint and say "It's really not that bad!"

Forget this noise! I want a meal replacement that has ingredients I can recognize! Like, oh, I don't know... wait! Yes I do!
Ham! Beef! Maybe some mustard, or mayonnaise! Even chicken! I mean come on! They can't even make these dang bars taste like chicken. Everything tastes like chicken!

Oh for the Love of God!

That's it -I'm going to make a sandwich!

Talk to you later!