You've ridden 10 miles. You stand over your mountain bike staring down the hill you're about to bomb when you hear something. A bear? You're not quite sure.
"Grrrowwwwl." It's your stomach, and the only thing you've got is a half-melted, day-old energy bar that's been baking in the sun. Another 15 miles to go. Is this glorified granola bar going to fill the void and get you home?
It's supposed to. Energy bars are marketed to fuel the muscles, fire your get-up-and-go spirit, and even help you trim down. Does all that make energy bars a great idea? Find out tonight on "Tech Live" as we take a tour of the Clif Bar headquarters in Berkeley, Calif., a place where the term "granola" definitely has more than one meaning.
Peace, love, and nuts
"We're
not making huge claims. We're making some basic claims of sound nutrition,"
says Gary Erickson, owner and chief promoter of Clif Bar, a popular food
supplement company best known for its energy bars. The company is based in a
laid-back, geeky, health-oriented community that was ripe for the blossoming
energy bar business when Clif Bar opened there in 1992. "Berkeley lets
people think out of the box."
In fact, the energy bar business is said to generate more than $1 billion in annual worldwide sales, according to Nutrition Business Journal, and much of that business is coming directly from Berkeley. Some of Erickson's biggest competitors -- including the high-profile company PowerBar -- are located there.
The California lifestyle inspires Erickson to run a casual operation. He gave employees a workout room, a washer and dryer, a hair salon (Erickson, who's completely bald, admits the salon "was not my idea"), and even a game room with an indoor golf range. It's all for an end product that packs a panoply of organic ingredients: organic rolled oats, organic roasted soybeans, organic milled flaxseed, and organic soy flour.
Glorified candy bars?
Competing products such as PowerBar, Balance, and MET-Rx add a variety of vitamin, carbohydrate, and mineral mixes. But energy bars also all generally contain sugar, sometimes more than what's found in a chocolate bar.
Fifteen years ago, when Erickson and his mother started cooking up energy bar recipes in their Berkeley kitchen, their product was geared toward athletes and workout fanatics. Most energy bar manufacturers target health-minded markets with a promise of convenient food that replaces normal meals and helps the overweight slim down and beef up.
For the heavy-duty exerciser, even athletic researchers admit there's some value to the extra "oomph" the bars give.
Don't eat the whole box
But the problem, according to San Francisco obesity specialist Dr. Melina Jampolis, is that non-athlete types and couch potatoes aren't turning to energy bars as substitutes in their diets, but rather eating them in addition to their regular meals. "I think they're being abused, and people are consuming too much of them at the wrong times for the wrong reasons," she says.
And the Center for Science in the Public Interest, in a recent edition of its Nutrition Action Health Letter, wrote that "eating healthy, whole foods like fruits and vegetables beats eating energy bars because foods contain phytochemicals and other constituents that aren't added to bars."
Eat your veggies
Translation: Phytochemicals are disease-fighting chemicals, and fruits and vegetables are good for you in ways energy bars can only hope to be.
Most critics insist that nothing beats wholesome, healthy foods. In fact, Jampolis says that "instead of an energy bar, people could just eat a whole wheat English muffin with a little peanut butter."
But like his competitors, Gary Erickson counts on food science and food research to refine supplements, and answer skeptics by producing what he says is a better energy bar. "We're looking to create some great new stuff," he says.
And, yes, he expects his mother to help out in the kitchen.
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