The Energy Bar Challenge, Part II!

This article is part of the Awful Energy Drink and Food Reviews series.

As a select few individuals may remember (thanks mom and dad!), I decided to assault my taste buds and various internal organs last Thursday by voluntarily consuming five popular "energy bars" located in the nearby supermarket in between the pills which kept your bones from falling apart and the all-organic Kosher marshmallow substitute topping jars. Apparently our society currently has a raging hard-on for products which will make us think that we're getting skinnier and healthier simply by eating them with a Diet Coke after consuming a supersized McDonalds lardbiscuit McCholesterol combo meal.

Now I'm sure some people out there actually take advantage of the benefits that energy bars offer, such as the benefit of tasting like chewing through a clump of sod without actually having to go into your yard, but the majority of obese Americans have absolutely no use for an "energy" snack product which resembles a cigar yet weighs well over 25 pounds. Any time I want to lose weight, I simply consume mass amounts of that Kashi cereal and enjoy the benefits of digesting its wonderful mixture of pure wheat, oats, rye, barley, corn, methane, peat moss, vitamin oxygen, charcoal, plywood, and splinters from the marijuana pipes that one of their loopy workers accidentally dropped into the processing machines.

Unfortunately for me, my work last week was not complete, as there were still four energy bars which escaped my critical review. Today I shall dive into the fabulous four remaining delicacies, the GenSoy Xtreme Peanut Butter Fix, ZONE Perfect CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY, TRIPLE LAYER ENERGY BAR BALANCE Gold COOKIES N' CREME CRUNCH, and the TRIPLE LAYER ENERGY BAR BALANCE Gold CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER bar. Please keep in mind that these companies, not me, made the shrew decision of using so many capital letters in their titles. If I was in charge of naming energy bars, I'd probably make them sound less retarded and call them good names like "Gross Pile of Shit" or "I Can't Believe It's Not Roadkill!", but I suspect the folks in marketing might have an issue with this.

ENERGY BAR #6: "GenSoy Xtreme Peanut Butter Fix"

LABEL DESCRIPTION: Holy shit, this soy is "Xtreme"! This is undoubtedly the most "Xtreme" soy product I have ever laid my virgin eyes upon! The wrapper comes festively decorated with a gigantic red X above a silver / grey / orange / brown series of horizontal stripes which made me feel as if I was traveling back in time... IN AN XTREME SOY WAY! OH HELL YEAH!!! I must admit that the "Peanut Butter Fix" title kind of scared me, as I'm fairly sure companies make up names like "Fix" so they won't get sued by the FDA once somebody discovers their "peanut butter" is actually a paste composed of recycled tires and alien fungus that grows on the bottom of manhole covers. Perhaps GenSoy's decision to call this a "Fix" was their shrewd attempt to score with the hip and trendy heroin-lovers crowd who must purchase a large amount of nutritional energy bars after they indulge themselves in a psychotic drug binge and shriek at their bathroom walls nonstop for three days.

Regardless of the decision behind this "Fix" - this "Xtreme Fix!" - GenSoy's wrapper warns consumers that we should all have "Have 25 grams of soy protein every day." The words "every day" are underlined just in case you're particularly dense and you stopped reading once you hit the word "protein," in which case you'd be asking yourself, "but self, how often should I have 25 grams of soy protein? I've got to know! Somebody please tell me! For the love of Christ, HOW OFTEN SHOULD I HAVE 25 GRAMS OF MOTHERFUCKING SOY PROTEIN?!?" Unfortunately, it doesn't explain why we need 25 grams of soy protein every day, but I've got some scientific nutritional-type friends and they claim if we don't get 25 grams of soy protein each day, we'll eventually turn into that kid from "Akira" and our arms will explode into a gigantic grotesque blob of fat and sinews, ultimately causing us to transform into a gigantic psychic baby which will destroy a major metropolitan city. I'm not sure why these people are my friends.

NUTRITIONAL FACTS: This Peanut Butter Fix has roughly 20-25% of every major vitamin, so if you eat four of them every day, the president of the FDA will come over to your house and present you with a decorative plaque you can place on your mantel. Unfortunately, each bar contains 70 fat calories (200 calories total), so perhaps you should look somewhere else to get your "fix."

REVIEW: Let me tell you a little story: I got really drunk one night during my freshman year of college at Vanderbilt University. In that night I stumbled over to some frat party and proceeded to entertain the nice people there by extolling the dangers of smoking while waving my arms around like a madman and generally behaving as if my spine would suddenly liquefy at any given time. I decided to demonstrate why people shouldn't smoke by putting my hand in an ashtray, scooping out a handful of cigarette butts, and chowing down on them. I'm not kidding about this incident, although I honestly wish I was. That was coincidentally the evening in which I fell down a hill and woke up in the back of somebody's pickup truck parked in downtown Nashville.

One single bite of "GenSoy Xtreme Peanut Butter Fix" reminded me of this evening and brought back all the fabulous rotting, disgusting memories that it contained. This is perhaps the only way I can accurately describe the taste sensation of biting into a GenSoy Xtreme Peanut Butter Fix bar; it's like eating a cup of cigarette butts, falling down a muddy hill, and then passing out in a stranger's pickup truck. I don't know what "soy" is, but I know an awful lot of unappealing third-world countries grow it, which gives me a significant reason to dislike it. As for the "Peanut Butter Fix" which the manufacturers claimed was supposed to accompany this treat, it was really nowhere to be found. Perhaps I need to fill out my name and address on a form and they'll fax it to me at a later date.

AMOUNT OF ENERGY I RECEIVED FROM CONSUMING THIS: After consuming it, my mind instantly began thinking about the aforementioned dreaded night in Nashville, so I guess it gave me enough energy to begin contemplating one of the most disgusting and horrible events in my life besides the morning I was born. Is this a good thing? You got me; perhaps chewing on a GenSoy Xtreme Peanut Butter Fix bar will allow you the joys of experiencing the time you were abducted by aliens and they used your colon as a festive pool hockey table.

RATING: 3/10