Carrie's Test Kitchen: ALT bars

I know I've mentioned a time or two that LARABAR is one of the few energy/snack bars I buy. I look for bars that have as few ingredients as possible, and deeply prefer that those ingredients are real food, and not processed isolates and additives. Some LARABAR flavors have only two or three ingredients, and it doesn't get much more "real food" than dates and nuts.

So, imagine my delight when a tiny little box was waiting for me when I got home one day last week after a long day at the hospital. Inside were free samples from LARABAR of their new offering: ALT, the Alternative Protein Bar.

The alternative protein in question is pea protein, which I first heard about last summer when I was at the Institute of Food Technologist educational conference in Las Vegas. Pea protein is a relatively new player on the protein powder scene, and it has the advantage of being vegan-friendly (unlike whey protein), has low risk of being allergenic (unlike soy protein), and is also gluten-free. The pea protein in ALT is GMO-free, as well.

I was starving when I got home, so I decided to sample what I thought would be my favorite bar of the lot, Peanut Butter Cookie. It did not disappoint. My favorite "regular" LARABAR flavor is Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, so this was not a surprise.

I don't eat bars every day, so a few days later I sampled Pumpkin Pie. I count this as my second favorite. It had a nice pumpkin flavor, and the spice had a tiny bit of kick, which I loved. It reminded me of LARBAR's Ginger Snap flavor, one of my favorites, which apparently they aren't making anymore, since it's not on their website anymore (I wondered why I always had so much trouble finding it in stores). Boo hoo!

Next up was Lemon Pound Cake. I skew toward nutty/caramelly/chocolaty flavors in bars, so I am pretty sure I've never had the comparable Lemon Bar flavor of the original. It was good, but not my favorite.

Finally, it was time for Cinnamon Apple Crisp. I've eaten many an original Apple Pie flavor in my time (mostly because it's one of the flavors in the three-flavor multipacks sold at Costco), and while it was fine, it was never one of my top picks. I actually liked this bar more than I expected. It had a nice amount of cinnamon, and I would totally pick this for an in-a-pinch breakfast bar.

Each bar has 10 grams of protein (compared with 3 to 6 in the original LARABARs). The ingredient list is a little longer, and includes brown rice syrup and sunflower oil, which I'm not super glad about. But I would still rate ALT as among the better bars on the market, and I will be buying the Peanut Butter Cookie and Pumpkin Pie flavors...and maybe a few Cinnamon Apple Crisp, too.

Road to RDville: Freaky Friday

Happy Monday! Last week was an intense experience in RDville. I started on a new clinical rotation, on the surgical trauma floor, and let's just say the patient population there is a little more complicated. I think my knowledge about things that can go wrong with the human body expanded 10-fold. And about half of those things are what one could call "complications" of long-term heroin use. Here's a public service announcement: Don't do drugs..and stay in school.

I always work hard in my internship rotations, but I especially worked my behind off last week. It was a complete "take a deep breath and jump in" moment a week ago when I realized I had eight high-risk patients to see, and all of them were brand-new to me. Fortunately, the RD I was working with took two of them, leaving me with a manageable workload. I did see eight patients in a day later in the week, but by then I had already seen some of them once, and was familiar with their charts.

On Friday, as I was walking from the bus stop to the hospital at the unreal hour of 6:30 a.m., I had the surreal feeling that I was in some kind of alternate, parallel universe. One where all semblance of my former life was...gone. I thought about it later (when I had time to think about something other than my patients), and I realized that this term has been the stretch of time that is truly the least "me." 

I gave up most of my hobbies and interests when I decided to go back to school (which I'm fine with...it won't be that way forever), but this term I've had the least amount of free time I've ever had (as gauged by how long my clean laundry sits in a pile before I can fold it, and how many months unread back issues of magazines I have piled next to my bed). To top things off, I'm spending most of my time doing something (inpatient dietetics) that, while deeply interesting and quite educational, is not what I want to do when I graduate.

So, yes, I had a bit of a Freaky Friday experience. And I can honestly say that while I am looking forward to learning a lot more in the last three weeks of this rotation, I'll be glad when I'm done...and I'm going to really, really enjoy the almost-two-week break before my final nine weeks of internship!

Links I Like

Happy Friday! And happy Food Revolution Day! I won't be doing any home cooking today, alas (unless you count my brown bag lunch), because I have a School of Public Health celebration event this evening (where I am being recognized for being named this year's outstanding student in my department). I have plans to cook something delicious and nutritious for dinner this weekend, though..just need to pick a recipe. Meanwhile, here are some links:

• Sometimes more is better, but sometimes more is just...more. Take antioxidants, for example. They serve a very important role in the body, but the answer is not to pop extra vitamin pills. The Washington Post article "Antioxidants are beneficial, but consumers should know the myths about them" does a nice job of laying out the important myths and truths.
• In (belated) honor of Mother's Day, a Civil Eats article on how mothers are fighting back against McMarketing: "Time for Action: Moms and Marketing to Kids Don't Mix." Go moms!
• To keep my fight against gluten misinformation going, I'm sharing a video and article from Dr. Sanjay Gupta on "Gluten Confusion: Why the Wrong People are Going Gluten-Free."
• This NBC article on the Institute of Medicine's report pointing out the the evidence for lowering sodium below 2300 milligrams a day is inconsistent had me at the opening words, "An unusual medical brawl erupted on Tuesday..." Yes, this is a sticky issues, as I wrote about recently for The Seattle Times, but if you read "Report questioning salt guidelines riles heart experts," you'll see that they, of course, point out that most of our sodium comes from prepared and restaurant foods. And remember, dear readers, that those foods are less healthful in lots of ways.
• Speaking of my pet topics, as The Washington Post points out, "Eggs, even with their cholesterol, are a good source of protein for most people."

Have a great weekend!