My assistant cross-country coach used to bribe me. If I ran for 20 minutes in agony, she’d give me a Clif Bar on the bus ride home.
The bribery worked, because I was, and remain, a fiend for food in bar form. I even made my own to save money, mixing whey and eggs and oats — they were great, aside from the part where they grew mold at room temperature and I didn’t know until I’d eaten two. I think it’s the last time I ever vomited. So that was it for me and homemade bars.
Most of my disposable income in college went to feed my obsession. An excerpt:
I bought most bars from Amazon, but they didn’t stock one of my favorites: Detour Peanut Butter Cream, which I got from a little convenience store behind the dorm. It was run by an Israeli couple who got to know me and my standard order (the bar, plus a diet ginger ale). We had many brief, sincere conversations across four years. I knew them better than most of my professors.
Half a lifetime later, those bars are still among the best I’ve had. They aren’t manufactured anymore.1
Here’s to the five-star bars I had to mark “Discontinued” in my personal protein database:
- RXBar Layers Peanut Butter Chocolate
- Optimum Nutrition Cake Bites
- Optimum Nutrition Chocolate Sea Salt Bites
- The emperor of bars: Supreme Protein Peanut Butter Crunch. I still remember the feeling of that first bite, and the smell of a freshly opened wrapper. The nuts embedded in the chocolate shell. Fuck!
Did you say “personal protein database”?
I did. This is the official public launch:
I might fill in more stats someday. But I don’t feel the need to make it comprehensive — I see it as more museum than buyer’s guide. (Something tells me my tastes aren’t typical.)
That said, if you’re just getting into protein bars and want a spiritual guide — or a few recommendations — I’m available.
What country has the best protein bars outside America?
Australia. And I might drop “outside America”.
I visited five convenience stores — three in Sydney, one in Sydney Airport, and one in a small regional airport. They all had vastly better selection than comparable stores in the U.S. I didn’t have time to visit the Aussie equivalent of a GNC, but one day, I will return. Keep your shelves stocked.
That’s Harbor Bridge in the background. I took a tour later. Their gift shop was the one sad exception: no bars.
Why protein bars?
In college, I realized that no one would make me run for 20 minutes ever again. I celebrated by gaining 40 pounds of muscle. The dining hall couldn’t keep up; it was a year of bars and basement barbells.
I got in the habit of trying new bars whenever I found them. Some became staples. Some were the worst things I’ve ever chewed. But even a bad bar makes a good story.
Now that I’ve crossed 150 bars in the database, it’s fun to think about reaching 200, maybe 250, before the singularity hits and I can synthesize a new bar for breakfast every morning of my life.