One of my weaknesses, when I went off gluten, was energy bars, because most were made gluten free, and I thought were fairly harmless, especially Nugo bars. I went through those, sometimes two as a meal. I loved how handy they were, and never stopped to look at all the ingredients.
But then, I read, well, I read Michael Pollan, especially In Defense of Food, but a lot of Food Rules, and I realized that I had to change my eating habits, and one of the things he talks about is not eating anything processed that has more than 5 ingredients. (Well, that, and don’t eat anything that your grandmother would not recognize).
So, I took at look at the Nugo Bars and realized I really couldn’t eat them anymore. Here is what the gluten free bar has in it:
Rice Protein Crisp (Rice Protein Concentrate and Rice Flour), Crisp Rice (Rice Flour), Crystalline Fructose, Tapioca Syrup, Walnuts, Brown Rice Syrup, Organic Agave Syrup, Chicory Root Fiber, Icing (Sugar, Invert Sugar, Tapioca Syrup, Water, Flaxseed Oil, Salt, Microcrystalline Cellulose), Raisins, Rice Protein, Water, Dried Carrots, Organic Acacia Gum, Cinnamon, Natural Flavors, Baking Soda, Salt, Almonds.
All good, well most good, by themselves, but more than 5 ingredients. Cartoonist and I kept wracking our brains. There must be a recipe for energy bars, or would we have to come up with something ourselves.
And then, I found the Raw Energy Cookbook, and I thought my problems were solved.
But, and there will be more on this tomorrow, we discovered to make the stuff we wanted, we would have to get a dehydrator. Argghh.
