I’ll get back to the Deep Thoughts and book reviews which are what I kid myself people come to this blog for, but first, adventures in – what, exactly? Snack food virtue signalling? Stress testing of gullibility levels? Subtle Pavlovian response thresholds? You be the judge!
Earlier, mentioned the baleful reality of blueberry vanilla kale snack skeet (I’m going with ‘skeet’ as the unit name for these things. ‘Wads’ and ‘pucks’ are good, too, but ‘skeet’ is a funnier word), the existence of which skeet I had until recently been blissfully unaware. A pile of these things appeared with the last shipment of hoity-toity ‘healthy’ snack food supplied to us workers by our little software company. Said pile is directly opposite the coffee machine, and so I see it several times a day.
Well, it’s Tuesday, and, as far as I can tell, that particular skeet-pile has not been diminished at all. While this does restoring to some small degree my faith in the tiny sample of humanity I work with, it also leaves unanswered the pure scientific question: Well? What are they like?
Therefore, with some trepidation but fortified by my holy love of science, I will now take one for the team, and crack into one of these things. First, photographic evidence:
In case the messaging isn’t clear, here’s some detail:
Don’t know how good I feel about this – it’s chock-full of ingredients!
OK, with the baseline set, let’s crack into this. Visual confirmation: there is evidence that at least *1* blueberry was harmed in the making of this skeet:
Did a little more investigating – Science! must march on! – broke it apart, and maybe up to 6 blueberries actualized their highest potentials in this thing. If there’s kale anywhere here, it is very well hidden, or they used some naturally invisible variety.
No, it looks like bird-feeder overflow that somebody stepped on. I suppose “Bird Feeder Overflow Skeet!” didn’t have as much cow bell as “LivBar Blueberry Vanilla Kale”.
It smells great. Didn’t see any fingerprints, so we’re not able to confirm the ‘hand made’ claim on the packaging. Here goes:
Kinda weird. You’re shocked, I’m sure. Upfront, you get a nose full of blueberries and vanilla, and it’s kind of crunchy and sweet, but the aftertaste reminds me of a North Coast tea shop frequented by aging hemp-clad hippies. The littler seed stick in my teeth.
Verdict: Not bad, exactly, but I’m not dying for another one. I think we’ll run the experiment: how long will the remaining skeet last, in their little heap on the counter upstairs? Being mostly guys and programmers here, my money’s on: until almost everything else is gone.
Now that I’ve eaten almost all of it, Bernie is starting to sound reasonable. What’s IN these things?!?
Yard Sale of the Mind 
Erf.. “LivBar”? My mind is… well, sleep is called for. A fast scroll and I ‘saw’ “LiveBait.”
😉 Shocking update: there are only 5 LivBars left! It’s possible somebody else is actually eating them?
On the plus side, there are a couple dozen puffy day-glo packages of seaweed-based snacks that seem to have gone a week now without anyone touching them. I’m not opposed to seaweed snacks in principle, but the virtue-signalling on the packaging makes we want to go grab a burger made from GMO cows fed GMO corn on a chemically soaked feedlot under smog-colored skies. Ya know?
I do indeed. I live around Portland, Oregon, and I live with that desire EVERYWHERE. I find I actually like a decent amount of the ‘health foods’ as long as they don’t have kale’s objectionable texture, but the preening self-righteousness that comes with the food’s pedigree makes me long for more GMO products, just for the head explosions.