Power Bars’ Performance--as Well as Taste--in Doubt

It’s nice to get mail. Recently, for instance, we heard from John Maeder of Claremont, who (following an item about sunburn in pets) wrote to tell us that he walks his Mexican hairless dogs in the shade and slicks them with high SPF sunscreen when needed. Maeder also sent photos of his dogs, one of which is called Scarlett No’Haira. (Thanks, Mr. Maeder--and wow!)

Always welcome too are letters pointing out grammatical errors. But the one that really caught our eye last week did so because of its title: “Snacking@Hyperspeed.” That’s a concept we can get behind.

Turns out the letter was simply some promotion for an energy bar--we won’t say which one--and is just one of the many bars floating around the newsroom at the moment. Call it energy bar season: There seem to be promotional packages and unsolicited free samples all over the place.

Is anything new going on? An informal test courtesy of my 10-year-old reveals that taste, at any rate, has not changed markedly: “This is horrible!” she yelled indignantly after biting into a luscious-looking chocolate brownie-flavored bar.

OK, so this is a kid who also wailed in horror upon sampling a low-fat, whole wheat, molasses-flavored toaster pastry. But the Harvard Women’s Health Watch newsletter is hardly more charitable.

Energy bars, in an informal survey of the publication’s staff, got taste and texture scores averaging 2.3, on a scale of 1 to 5 (where 5 is yummiest).

So we don’t eat these bars for the taste. But there are other reasons, right? The bars are carefully formulated to provide us with sustained energy release so as to boost our athletic performance. And they’re perfect meals on the go. Aren’t they?

In an article titled “Power in a Bar or Pricey Snack?” the Harvard newsletter examines some of these claims.

Though it’s true that energy bars handily pack a lot of calories into a dense slab, there’s not much evidence to support the notion that bars formulated with specific proportions of carbohydrates, fats and proteins give an athletic endurance edge. In a study, one bar of this type did keep blood glucose moderately higher for longer. But that doesn’t necessarily translate into better performance in a marathon.

There’s also scant scientific evidence to support the notion that the bars are any better as pick-me-ups for most of us nonathletes than trail mix, bagels, fruit, or even--gasp--candy bars. Still, they do contain a lot of vitamins and minerals. This evening, I might just press half a dozen vitamin pills into a candy bar and chomp that instead. Mmmm.

Total Eclipse of the Mood

This week, we took a look at the Web site for the British magazine New Scientist (https://www.newscientist.com) to see what’s hot and happening in the world of science and medicine. Many important things, apparently. But--call us frivolous--the following items particularly took our fancy.

* Eclipses are stressful! So say scientists at Manchester University and Coventry University in England. The scientists trekked over to France to watch the 1999 summer eclipse and, so long as they were there, took samples of their grad students’ blood and examined the samples with a device called a luminometer.

Activity of certain blood cells called leukocytes were slightly heightened during the eclipse--and leukocytes, though helpful in immunity, release damaging free radicals. Call me devil-may-care, but I’m not going to worry too much about this one.

* Drinking alcohol through a straw may--just may--get people drunk quicker. Or so concludes the magazine’s staff, who put the wive’s tale to the test by partaking of measured amounts of alcohol then examining how well they could walk straight lines if they a) drank through a straw and b) drank normally. The results are inconclusive, however, since the straw-drinkers knew what the study was designed to test, which could have affected their performance.

* Finally, anyone who’s worried about the buildup of unhealthful or unsightly mold in the bathroom has got to check out the article “Good Housekeeping,” about one Australian man’s nontoxic solution: a farm of mold-grazing slugs that live in his shower stall.