Bar, part the third and last.

Long-term Snail Shell aficionados may know that I've tried a few times to make the best nutritional bar out of fruits and vegetables. Like a Clif bar, but with actual food in place of "soy protein isolate" and stuff. US FDA RDA's were no object. Neither was taste.

Boy, this is embarrassing.

Unrelatedly, though, I can save a little face by saying that I, before reading that article, already first conquered and then abandoned the Bar project.

First, the "conquered" part: This company called Just Tomatoes makes a product that is, well, just dried vegetables. (I'm sure other companies do too, this is just the one I found) Grind them up in a food processor into a flour, mix them up with an egg, bake until done. There you go: a lot of mixed vegetables, plus an egg, in bar form. No weird ingredients. (if you're vegan, just add water instead of an egg.) I guess it's about as "healthy" as you can get, although you clearly can't reduce foods to just a number of how healthy they are. This brings us to:

Second, the "abandoned" part: It's not worth it. I'm reading In Defense of Food by my food guru, Michael Pollan, who struck a nerve with a bit about how not only are we not eating actual food, we're not actually eating it. Scarfing something down is worse than sitting down to dinner with friends or family, in a lot of ways. In every culture (but not very much in ours) food is social and cultural as well as nutritious. We don't need a new bar to make the food we eat healthier, we need a revolution to make the way we eat food healthier too. As Brillat-Savarin, maybe the first gourmet dude ever, has said: animals feed, humans eat, men of wit dine.

Misbehaving prisoners eat bars.