MAN FERTILITY Review: Matisse & Jack's Energy Bars

I received the following email:

I recently came across your site and thought it would be worthwhile to write. I work with a San Francisco-based natural foods startup and we've developed a new product which might interest your readers-- a homemade, all-natural nutrition bar that you bake from a mix like brownies. We came up with these baked bars after we grew tired of hard and tasteless packaged bars. We liked the convenient nutrition of the ubiquitous bar, but we also wanted something unprocessed that tasted like *real food*. And we've had a great response... this month the Denver Post ranked our bars the #1 best-tasting in a blind test of 10 popular energy bars.

Unfortunately these bars are made with oats, gluten, and soy protein, but I really really like the idea of cutting out the wasteful wasteful foil wrapper things (I actually do make my own bars--anyone want recipe?--and carry them in woodpulp cello bags or waxed paper), and so I enlisted MAN FERTILITY, a big energy bar fan (there's also that male thing about being able to eat something w/o utencils). He said:

“It seems like the intersecting male desires for efficiency and to get ‘fit’ (usually defined, alas, in terms of sheer muscle mass) has generated a booming market in various energy/protein bars. If you like the convenience of bars, but are less than enthused about their cost (and indeed sometimes wonder if they should really be considered food at all), you might be interested in my recent discovery, Matisse & Jack’s “bake-at-home” bars. They come as a vaguely Pillsburyesque boxed mix to which you add yogurt and/or apple sauce and bake at home. I like the fact that in place of the sometimes highly processed ingredients in other bars, they are made of healthy ingredients like organic oats and flax and even aluminum-free baking soda, to which one can add whatever other ingredients strikes your fancy (I like to throw in some extra oats, coconut, and berries).

They also taste much fresher than your usual bar, and by baking them at home you avoid adding to the waste-stream all the foil wrapping that usually accompanies energy bars. I don’t know if Matisse and Jack are real people (or just outdoorsy male versions of Betty Crocker and Aunt Jemima), but if they are and they see this post, my only suggestion would be to switch the soy protein in the bars to a healthier source, such as hemp protein. Otherwise, these are definitely a cheaper and tastier alternative to most commercial energy bars.”

With envy, I watched MAN FERTILITY eat these. Boy I miss cheese, pasta, baked goods, toothpaste with sparkly things, etc. If you are doing the wheat and dairy, definitely check these bars out: http://www.matisseandjacks.com. And Matisse, Jack, think about a gluten-free dairy-free soy-free bar, mebbe?

tags technorati : reviews energy bars organic Matisse and Jack