PowerBar Pria CarbSelect

[cjsmith]

I got a coupon for a free PowerBar Pria CarbSelect, so I tried it. My thoughts:

- Is "Pria" the feminine of "Prius"? If so, this pair fits many stereotypes about the sexes: the Pria is smaller and can't carry nearly as much, but tastes a whole lot better.*
- They're inventing even more excuses for carbs now. This thing has 2g "Impact Carbs", which is the remainder when you've taken the total carbs and subtracted off fiber and (get this) "sugar alcohol". Tellingly, there's a note on the wrapper cautioning diabetics that Impact Carbs aren't intended for YOU. I deduce that "Impact Carbs" are a lie marketing trick and "sugar alcohol" means "the manufacturer wanted a smaller Impact Carbs number".
- It doesn't taste like a protein bar, which is wonderful. However, it has an odd smell.
- At my local Safeway, it's $1.99 for this 110-calorie thing. I wonder how many Impact Carbs I'd get if I just ate two dollar bills.

_________________________________________________
* I hope this will start several interesting arguments in the comments.

Comments

[tenacious-snail.livejournal.com]

I find women to be tastier and not capable of carrying as many things in their arms. However, they have more lower body strength which may, in fact, allow them to carry a greater load. Additionally, at least with reference to the women I have had the privilege of tasting, they are not smaller than men.

(Ladybug and brian1789 are the same height and have the same size hands, though she outweighs him by about 40 pounds).

[tenacious-snail.livejournal.com]

I may need a larger sample size.

There is one sweetie (male) I have whose smell I totally and utterly adore. It can, depending on the situation, either calm me down when I am stressed and anxious, or arouse me instantaneously. Just put my face anywhere between his armpit and his neck, and it happens. Yowza.

Taste, though, is a little more specific. It isn't just smell. But I think the more body hair on men makes a difference to where and how things taste. I also think a big part of it is that as much as I adore adore adore giving oral, with women, the taste is more consistently *there*, as her scent just fills my nostrils. With men, my tongue isn't doing quite the same sort of thing, and once I've licked and sucked for a bit, the taste doesn't change or reload, until, well, the end.

(tmi, anyone?)

[genderfur.livejournal.com]

I agree about the taste being more *there*.

Overall, I disagree with the premise. When I was tasting men, I found that how they tasted depended hugely on how they ate, and whether they were drinkers or smokers. In tasting women, the same is in effect, *plus* there can be huge changes from time-o-month stuff.

So I say that you can't really generalize, and now you think I'm just a poopy-head spoil-sport, don't you?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah: size, strength, etc are just the usual generalizations. I outmassed Rob for probably the first seven years we were together. I'm much more curious about how many people think women taste better vs. how many people think men taste better. ;-)

[just-cyd.livejournal.com]

oh, women taste better, most definitely. ;-D especially one who eats a very healthy organic diet. smoking seems to work against an appealing flavor/aroma for both sexes, and body hair is certainly a factor. that said, i'd much rather have a "natural" partner than one who likes to smother him/herself in artificial fragrance.

tastes great! less filling!

[gev.livejournal.com]

I'm sure some diehard cocksuckers will disagree about the Pria tasting better.
screw all these lo-carb, lo-fat, lo-blow diets.
I'll just keep my random balance, thanks. :)

Re: tastes great! less filling!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

As for men and women, I too am interested in balance. ;-)

[tytso.livejournal.com]

Impact carbs is an Atkins Diet thing. The theory (whether or not you believe it) is that certain carbs cause an immediate rise in your blood sugar, which for people who have insulin resistance, they can't deal with as well, but when the insulin finally kicks in, you get a blood sugar crash, which causes you to be less effective, more irritable --- and may cause you to grab for the nearest candy bar to get your blood sugar back up, but then you over-compensate and then you get another blood sugar peak followed by a crash.

So the claim is that if sugar alcohols are less bad than raw sugar, because they don't cause the blood sugar spike as much. This is certainly true for myself, in terms of avoiding the sugar crash, and I'll eat a few Atkins bars (which I think taste better than the Pria Carb Select) when I need a snack, just for that reason. That being said, there are a lot of people who will tell you from experience that eating huge amounts of sugar alcohol will slow or stop weight loss, and that Real Food (tm) that are low-carb naturally *is* better for you (and easier on your wallet!) than these artificial candy-bars that are low in "impact carbs".

As far as whether women taste better than men, I've never had the urge or the opportunity to taste the latter, so I can't really do a fair comparison. :-P

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

AH - it's a little like "Glycemic Index", then. Thanks! (That bar sure tasted like it had a lot of carbs sweetness. I figured they had to be cheating somehow. Sounds like they only sorta were.)

[ohhjuliet.livejournal.com]

hahaha I thought your subject line said powerBRA. hahahahahahaha

[dobledorje.livejournal.com]

A couple of weeks ago I bought some PowerBar Protein Plus bars to see if maybe I'd like them better than the Apex stuff I buy at 24 Hour Fitness (where I work out). I couldn't bring myself to chew through an entire bar. I still have one sitting in one of my drawers at work and just can't bring myself to eat it!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Some of those are truly awful, aren't they? Ever tried MetRx bars? Those are the worst I've ever encountered.

[genderfur.livejournal.com]

and some are actually quite edible. I used to eat Luna bars a lot.

They're all a lot like candy-bars with innocent looks on their faces. "Granola" bars, too.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Luna bars have a protein-to-carbs ratio pretty close to the candy range. They taste pretty good.

[firecat]

I'll say sugar alcohol isn't intended for diabetics. To diabetics it tastes FOUL. Like some kind of cleaning solution.

(Well, to this one, anyway.)

And I understand you're correct about females having more sensitive taste buds than males.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh wow. I didn't catch that "cleaning solution" taste from the Pria, and it had a lot of sugar alcohol. But then, maybe I have male taste buds ;-)

[abenn.livejournal.com]

I've maintained myself without blood sugar meds for the last year, but one of the ways I do that is by avoiding sugar alcohols. I read a paper about artificial sweeteners by the Glycemic Research Institute in Washington DC, and they said that sugar alcohols were not low glycemic. They don't like any artificial sweeteners, really, and are suspicious even of stevia because it hasn't had enough testing (in their opinion.) They seem to like the natural sweetener in lo han kuo, though, so I will occasionally use that if a recipe must have a little sweet in it.

So I avoid artificial sweeteners and processed food bars and that works for me. One side effect: I'm extremely sensitive to the taste of sweet. Berries that I used to put sugar on now taste extraordinarily sweet on their own. It's a good trade-off, I think.

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

I wonder how many Impact Carbs I'd get if I just ate two dollar bills.

Haha! thanks for this.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Is "Pria" the feminine of "Prius"?

Not in Latin it isn't. Prius is a neuter word meaning "former" or "prior." Pria has no meaning in Latin.