October 1, 2024

Cliff Bars

Why do I keep buying these things?

This essay is intended to be my "no more Cliff Bars" manifesto.

I was on a hike two weeks ago and it was time to stop and eat something. So I was in the middle of "choking down" yet another Cliff bar and had this epiphany: "This is awful! Why am I eating this thing?".

I thought I had the "problem" solved. I would just buy them one or two at a time and then they would be fresh and "good". That was certainly an improvement of sorts. At least I wasn't endangering my teeth and dental work trying to consume an old and dried up bar. But even the fresh bars taste like donkey crap. And they all taste the same. Yes indeed, they have nice labels like "Crunchy Peanut Butter" or "Chocolate Brownie", but in truth they never taste any like the nice flavor on the label. They taste like exactly what they are, some kind of compount made from oats and brown rice syrup. Read the ingredients. What the heck is brown rice syrup?

(This makes it sort of the ultimate in "processed food" if you read the above.)

There is only one reason to buy these things. Laziness. You could put a nicer spin on it and say "simplicity", but I like the honesty of "laziness" better.

What do they offer? 260 calories of somewhat digestable energy. Once you manage to choke them down. Let's look at alternative ways to get 260 calories of energy.

Eat an apple and 16 wheat thins and you are at 235 calories. Eat a few more wheat thins and you are at the magic 260 calories.

But above all -- put the enjoyment back into eating!

Real food

I have started taking "real food" on the trail

I bought a "Hydro-flask" insulated food-jar in the 20 oz size and carry things like cooked rice, beans, potato salad.

A bit pricey, but if you fill it with food from the refrigerator, you can carry it on a hot day without the food warming up and spoiling. Be sure to also carry a spoon. Given the price of $2 for a Cliff bar, purchased one or two at a time, one of these is paid for once you have said "no!" to 20 Cliff bars.

Many endurance athletes talk about the benefits (psychological if nothing else) of eating "real food" rather than concotions prepared for and marketed to endurance athletes.

Some concrete examples (some things I like)

Consider the Resers Potato Salad from the list above. Fill that 20 oz container with 10 ounces of that and you have 575 calories that tastes way better than two Cliff bars. I don't even think I could make myself eat two Cliff bars.

Now what about Bushes baked beans (another favorite of mine). I buy the big 28 ounce can because it is only $1 more than the handy little can. The big can holds 6 serving of 1/2 cup. Each gives 160 calories. So pack half the can into your 20 ounce "food jar" and you have 480 calories. As much as 2 cliff bars and a lot more tasty.

Another of my favorites. A 15 ounce (what do you bet it used to be 16 ounce) can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. 400 calories. Not quite two cliff bars. I wouldn't carry this for a lunch, but I sometimes do for a backpacking dinner. When I have to carry water anyway, carrying a can of prepared food is really not a weight penalty.

Something that is often in my fridge and can get shoveled into my "food jar" is cooked white rice. This is 206 calories per cup. (Uncooked rice is 691 calories per cup).

Cooked lentils are 230 calories per cup, cooked. Uncooked lentils are 676 calories per cup. Lentils are just beans. A cup of cooked pinto beans is 245 calories. Uncooked is around 690.

If my fridge is stocked the way it often is, I can stick 2 cups of cooked rice and 1 cup of beans into my "food jar" and have a 657 calorie lunch. The calorie equivalent of 2.5 cliff bars.

Somewhat tongue in cheek, but worth considering nonetheless. A donut can have from 150 to 400 calories depending of course on the donut. More or less equivalent to a Cliff bar, but with a lot of those calories coming from refined sugars. Tasty, but expect a big burst of energy that won't last. They also are not convenient for hiking in any way that I can conceive of.

Even more tongue in cheek. 1/2 cup of ice cream has 137 calories. So 2 cups has 274, just about equivalent to one Cliff bar. Much more tasty, but somewhat impractical for hiking unless my food jar does a much better job keeping things cold than I think it will.

More ideas

What about "gorp"? Now commonly sold as "trail mix". Here we have a mixture of peanuts, raisins, and candy. I find that if this is more than half my diet while on the trail, my stomach will get upset. I need bread or crackers for at least half my diet to buffer all that trail mix.

Some science

This is veering away from the original intent of this essay, which was all about taste and enjoyment. My thesis was that Cliff bars taste terrible and there must be better options.

There is more to the "brown rice syrup" than just horrible industrial garbage that provides cheap calories. Maybe. It has a lot of maltodextrine. Maltodextrine is a particular sugar that has a very high glycemic index (around 110). This is terrible of course if you are diabetic. But if you are actually a climber or endurance athelete (like the original market for these) it can be ideal because that sugar gets right into your bloodstream and gives you the boost you just might be looking for.

The place to learn about all of this is Hammer nutrition (and I strongly endorse their products). Along with good products they have lots of nutritional information relevant to endurance athletes.

They call maltodextrime a "complex carbohydrate", which it is -- it is a glucose polymer, usually with 3 to 17 units in each chain in the forms offered to us as fuel. They claim that along with getting into your system quickly, it also sustains much longer than refined sugars. In other words there is not the quick spike followed by a crash that you get from products that are based on refined sugars.
Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's hiking pages / tom@mmto.org