Climb for Hospice

And once again, I joyfully bring you another installment of:

THE PROTEIN BAR TASTE TEST!

I believe this is installment #7. For something new and exciting, I thought I’d rock on down to the health food store and see what they had in the way of protein bars. Chock-full of nutritious and healthy goodness, I was sure to find something to please my discernible palate. And there, I stumbled across three new bars! And heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere we go!

Brand: Healthy Addictions (this is starting off well!)
Tagline: “Raw Health Bar” (Meh.)
Flavour: Coco Bliss (this just got better!)
First Ingredient: Organic raw coconut

This little bar is a wee jumble of fun packed into an edible slab the size of my palm. It’s small, it’s colourful, it’s almost adorable! (I am SUCH a girl!). It also cost me $4.79, so it had better be damn good for that price. Actually, I’m secretly hoping that it’s terrible so that I don’t really get ‘addicted’ and eventually be forced to sell my possessions to keep myself in a perpetual state of Coco Bliss.

I open the wrapper (fairly easy to open, so that’s always good), and look into the little cellophane cavern to see the wondrous view before me: it looks exactly like a Nanaimo Bar! Oh heaven of heavens! Could this be true?! Why am I wasting so much time staring at this thing when I could be happily devouring it in the name of science? Life is too short! Eat! Eat!

I take a bite – a small one, mind you, so as not to overwhelm myself with the glory that is… that is…

Ok seriously? It tastes like booze! No wait… wait… let me ummm “savour” it a bit longer to see if I can get this taste right…

Nope. I was right. It tastes like booze. Booze-y little bits of coconut in chewy form. No, no… ‘chewy’ isn’t the word I need here. It’s isn’t chewy. Nor is it melt-in-your-mouth. It is neither crunchy, nor crispy. Neither creamy, nor chunky. What IS this texture!?

It’s not really bar-like. It’s not necessarily a solid. Definitely not a liquid. It’s so weird! I take a bite, chew a few times, and then it sort of disappears. It’s the strangest thing. I can’t quite place this texture, although I am certain I’ve had something like it before. Something accidental somehow, something I didn’t exactly enjoy, something… oh god. I know *exactly* what the texture is!

You know how sometimes when you bring a tissue up to your nose, and accidentally inhale a small piece of it, and it lands on your tongue, totally grossing you out? THAT is what the Coco Bliss bar texture is.

That’s right, the Coco Bliss Bar tastes kind of like eating a booze-soaked wad of clean facial tissue wrapped around a chunk of shredded coconut. How on earth did they manage to pull that off?! I mean, that takes a special kind of talent, right there. It almost deserves some sort of peer recognition. An award, maybe! The Holy Crap, You Guys Are Phenomenally BAD At Texture Award. Now that’s an awards-show dinner I’d probably skip.

Toilet paper coconut booze bar. Huh. You know, I’ve gotta’ say, that really isn’t the taste I’m going for either 19,000 feet up, nor at sea level. Bizarre!

These Healthy Addictions bars are enough to drive a woman to drink.