the degeneration of the granola bar

Take a trip down the cereal aisle lately?  I would not recommend it for anyone who's even remotely hungry.  You'll come out the other end with all sorts of interesting items. 

Take granola bars, for example.  When I was a kid there were granola bars.  Period.  We all knew exactly what we were going to get.  Crunchy.  Oat & honey or cinnamon.  An instant desire for something to drink.  Now you can get crunchy, chewy, nut, fruit, yogurt coated, chocolate infested, marshmallow dotted.  Not to mention the creative food thinkers that have made cereal and milk into a bar; I guess a bowl of cereal's too inconvenient?  Seems like these days lots of things labelled "granola bars" bear a close resemblance to their guilty-pleasure cousins Pop Tarts located a little farther down the aisle.
 
I know that every food source has to have a label divulging all its inner secrets as a way to inform the unsuspecting public. Ha ha ha.  (Ever try to read one of those ingredient lists?  There should be a Rosetta Stone language course for ingredients.)  Some people are big label readers.  I'm not.  Aside from vague disquiet that I wasn't really giving them something healthy, I've no scientific basis for condemning all those fun snacks.  They just seem to leave you vaguely unsatisfied, and a little confused.  Which path did I just take?  Food group or dessert?

Wait a minute.  Isn't dessert a food group?  (Speaking of that, I have a cookbook that has a recipe for brownies with beef.  I'm not joking. What category would THOSE fall into?)

I've got a few different recipies for granola bars.  One is a pb&j granola bar recipe.  It was weird....we couldn't decide if we liked them or not.  I have another that calls for chopped Ghirardelli chocolate.  That one should be reserved for giving to guests you want to impress.....or confuse.

Consider the commercials for granola bars on the tv.  Well I guess honestly I can't think of many for the chewy camp. I'm sure there are some, but as my kids get older, we watch less kid-driven tv.  (They seem to pop up in the Sunday coupons often, however.  save .55 and keep the kiddos quiet.)  But the crunchy ones, now, boy do those people get to have adventures. They bring granola bars to mountain tops, and cliffs, and unexplored wilderness. Apparently when viewing a sunset over a canyon you need a snack to make it complete. Too bad those don't come with a coupon for an SUV.

Now I'm all for convenience. So are my girls.  (The Brady family had no idea.  Alice was amazing.  If we had an Alice maybe we'd eat less conveniently.)   We have two granola bar camps - chewy and crunchy.  We've reached the point of agreement with regard to what brand we like, but from there, we diverge.  Both granola bar camps have some nutrition, more or less ...neither is perfect.  We like to have them stashed in our purses when we dash out the door (Well the ladies anyhow.  My husband doesn't carry a purse.  No European shoulder bag for him, or granola bars for that matter), so we buy a variety of types for our house. The older two enjoy chewy fruit adventure.  My youngest and I will continue to nosh the tree hugger crunchy ones that have been around since I was a kid.  

I love candy.  I just don't want granola in it.