Part I: The Dirty Hippie Snack Bar

A far cry from the standard chocolate + sugar formula that TMW is used to
dealing with, I chose this product to be the first in a series of five products
that Lord Jezo would never review. The ingredients were so recognizable and mono
(ok, and bi) syllabic that I memorized them at first glance. Wheat, Almonds,
Soy, Peanut and Milk. Seriously, the list of ingredients is actually shorter
than the name of the product, "Kashi 7 Whole Grains & Sesame Honey Almond Flax
Chewy Granola Bars."

Many readers may recognize the Kashi brand from their very popular "Good
Friends" cereal line which combines the joy of a cold, pre-dawn bowl of wheat
and milk with the unsettling presence of eerie-eyed middle-aged, mixed minority
couplings. Other readers will recognize the Kashi brand from the pantry of that
one really obnoxious, nappy-haired idiot from college who could never quite keep
a job but insisted that the problem was with "the system" and not his constant
stench of patchouli or penchant for drug abuse (the lame kinds.) Witness -

The good news is that the bar contains 4 grams of fiber, 5 grams of protein
and 300 milligrams of Omega-3s. Well, I assume that is the good news. Otherwise
I couldn't imagine why the Publicity department of the Kashi company would
display those facts in large, well accentuated letters across the front. So,
either those are fantastic selling points or I am simply being told three
intensely useless facts in such a way that I will suddenly find myself assuring
others that 4 grams of fiber, 5 grams of protein and 300 milligrams of Oemga-3s
are just the sort of thing one wants in a snack bar. Only history will prove who
the fool is here.

The bad news, though, is hidden above in the innocuously transparent
ingredient list. Sure, we all remember it contains Wheat, Almonds, Soy, Peanut
and Milk but what does Wheat, Almonds, Soy, Peanut and Milk taste like? Go to
your kitchen right now, and put some wheat germ in a bowl, slap in some almonds,
add a couple peanuts, poor on a bit of milk and there you go: you've not only
successfully recreated this bland snack bar (you can shave some tofu into it if
you want to get the total experience) but you have subverted the Establishment
by not driving your gas-guzzling, poison-spewing death machine to The Man's A&P
to buy it. Way to be!

1 out of 5 dirty stinking hippies.