Thursday, January 21, 2010

The Protein Jungle

It's a jungle out there.

Protein supplements are an essential part of building muscle, as near as I can tell. So if you've embarked on the Odyssey, you'll be in the market for protein powders, bars, salves, sprays, whatever, to get you the total daily allowance of protein (after the regulation six servings of chicken breast, of course).

And there are a LOT of people out there who want to sell it to you, with come-hither ads:

Any health-food store worth its Black Cohosh capsules will have 20 or 30 different brands of powdered whey protein.


They might even have a few protein bars.


Heck, any supermarket will have at least a dozen protein bars.

There are choices to be made, folks. My object has been simple: find the protein source with highest ratio of protein to carbs or fat. Shakes are better than bars in general, but sometimes bars are just quicker and more convenient.

But there's one more variable to be factored in. The Divine Ms B brought it sharply into focus a couple of days ago. We had purchased an assortment of bars to sample and examine carefully their various offerings of protein, carbs, fat, etc. As she took a bite of one, she said,

"You know, if someone gave this to me, and said, 'Here, I found this, but I'm not sure if it's food or not,' I wouldn't know what to tell them."

Yeah. Not all of them are what you call tasty.

I'm happy to report that, for the time being, we found one that has pretty good ratios and would probably be identified as food in a blind taste test. So we're happy. And you can get it at Costco.

The research continues.

1 comment:

  1. laughing my way through your archives, I had to click on the energy bar photo to make sure it wasn't a cigarette display -- it's nearly identical, you know, and probably just as effective. Smokers are skinny, right?

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