Let's face it, all you food-loving, regular meal-eating types reading this site, you are the lucky ones. Most of you are blessed with a stove, maybe some ingredients in your cabinet, a bottle of wine half drunk atop your fridge. But if you're a city guy like me, always on the hustle for a dollar, always one dime short of a cup of coffee, always standing out in the rain in front of a hot food story, watching through rainy windows, then it's all about how to stay full and focused on the street, to not pass out while racing from one job interview to another, how to keep your nutrition at a full gallop while never actually sitting down. 

So God created the food bar! 

I'm sure to the average foodie these things are pox, a blight on nutrition and the gourmand's worst nightmare, but to us who dreamt as children of a future where we could eat candy bars for dinner, the nutrients in chocolate-flavored soy logs, are our life's blood; they keep our blood full of something other than caffeine and nicotine and urban despair. Trapped like jungle rats in a maze of dead-eyed salesman and bloodthirsty wall-streeters on their way to steakhouses and unemployment lines, we duck into the 42nd street bodega and grab our fix to go.

Here are some of the personal favorites:

The Odwalla Food Bar : The carrot one ain't so good, and the green food one has a weird taste, and I don’t cotton to fruit flavored bars, but a peanut butter one goes just great with an odwalla fruit juice (Berries Go-mega, for example) to give you the impression that you've really eaten a full meal. Post-eating indigestion factor is almost nil. As a writer I buy these buy the box (available at an Indian-owned bodega on 9th and 2nd Ave for $12.35 a box (of twelve) and eat them as I work on my great works of literature. They're pretty great, even if the literature's not.

 

 

(As a side note, the Odwalla bar has recently undergone a radical revision, where it's now "softer" than previous incarnations. I personally don't approve of this transition, but your mileage may vary. Now it has the under-baked texture of generic granola bars, though with substantially less post-meal sugar-shock.)

 

 

 

The Zone bar -- These crunchy little critters are chocolaty on the outside and hewn into bar shaped chunk of sticky rice-crispy sized "soy nuggets" on the inside. One gets the impression eating them that this is a slightly stale but far from unpleasant chocolate covered rice krispy treat that's been exposed to the same gamma radiation that turned Bill Bixby into the Incredible Hulk. Again, with a heavy juice accompaniment this will get you to the church reception in high spirits, the post-eating sugar crash factor is virtually non-existent as is the post crash nausea factor (aka stomach resistance factor)

 

 

 

Balance Bar -- This stuff tastes like it was engineered in a lab, and my stomach tends to react towards it with a thinly veiled hostility. Since gauging the exact effect of long term cell-building nutrients is hard to do while just eating quickly before meeting your nerve date in a bar on 5th and A, let me just conveniently list this one third and keep moving.

 

Power Bar -- This is the granddaddy of all the bars -- around back in 1986 when this stuff was all just for Olympic skiers and body builders. The power bar is like a gigantic piece of Mary Jane style peanut butter candy, which if you don't know what I am talking about, then good for you. These are the sorts of things that linger around long after all the other Halloween trick or treat goodies are gone. Once one has nearly totally exhausted their jaw muscles getting this sucker absorbed into the old stream, then apparently it can be quite invigorating, but to tell you the truth, I'm usually passed out by then. Still, one can't argue with the swanky gold wrapper, and when I'm totally fatigued, this is the baby I go for.

 

 

Snicker Marathon Bar - This is like my guilty pleasure bar, and if I'm in a play or something where I have no time to eat but need a lot of energy and focus, I'll get one of these for "Dessert" after my meal of a power bar and a zone bar. Damn, but that is gross to think about, but there it is. These are sweet and tasty and the sticky caramel power bar element fits just fine under the cover of the Snickers usual caramel center. The peanuts carry the whole thing home in grand style.

 

 

 

Perhaps bar eaters reading this will post some of their own favorites and least favorites. Of course nothing beats an old-fashioned cooked meal, but then again, nothing beats the thrill of racing to and fro on the urban stress mill like a grey flannel chicken with its head cut off either.

 

Hmmmm, chicken.