Daily Paragraph -- thinkThin High Protein Bar Taste Test

I like Clif Bars. I especially like them as a post-lunch dessert to my salad at lunch. But, my supply has run out, and I haven't had the wherewithal to drive over to Costco to restock. So, today I wandered across the street to 7-11 to satisfy my dessert urges. Clif Bars are available there, but I decided that if I was going to spend two bucks on an energy bar, I might as well try something new and different. Enter the thinkThin High Energy Protein Bar -- chunky peanut butter flavor (chocolate dipped).

From the packaging, you can tell right away the target demographic: people who lie to themselves to feel better about eating candy. The good people at thinkThin take this approach from multiple angles. First, the wrapper has the simplicity and the dull monochromatic color palate of an organic product, though nowhere does it actually claim to be organic.

The wrapper goes to some pain to inform of what horrible nasties you will not be consuming in your energy bar -- no sugar and no gluten (heaven for fend!). Personally, I'm completely ambivalent to the gluten-free claims. I suspect a lot of candy bars have no gluten (unless they sneak a cookie there like those clever bastards at Twix), so it's not like gluten-free is some kind of indicator of healthfulness. As for the lack of sugar, I missed that when I picked the bar. I might have chosen something else, had I noticed. Fortunately, the lack of sugar didn't prove to be an issue. They used maltitol for sweetness, and I generally don't mind the reduced sugars as an alternative to sucrose. It's the zero-calorie artificial sweeteners I find to be pretty gross (aspartame, I'm looking at you!).

Once you open the wrapper to peak at the product inside, it becomes pretty evident that you are about to eat a candy bar. It's dipped in chocolate. Dip something in chocolate and it becomes candy. I think Julia Child said that. Or maybe it was Dan Quayle.

And how does it taste? It's okay, but not amazing. Texturally, it falls somewhere between a Powerbar and the concoction Reese's crams into it's peanut butter cups. The chocolate coating is a little muted in it's chocolatey-ness, and the peanut butter bar inside is similarly muted in it's peanut-buttertude. I blame both these issues on the lack of real sugar. Next time, I'll just get a peanut butter chocolate chunk Clif Bar, which has actual chocolate chips and actual sugar in it. At 250, the two products have the same number of calories, too.

An interesting side note on the calorie count: at dinner tonight, I took a peek at the calorie content of the kim chee we were enjoying with our Korean beef short ribs and kung pao Brussels sprouts.The kim chee came from a jar (the ribs and sprouts were prepared by my loving wife), and according the label, one serving of the kim chee provides 15 calories  with seven serving to the container. That means I could have eaten two and a half jars of that of that tangy, spicy, garlicky goodness and received the same amount of energy as the energy bar I had eaten early in the day. Of course, it would have cost at least $10 more...