Witness the following. A bar that comes in various flavours: chocolate chip, dark "luxury" chocolate etc. Yumm! It's cheap, costs around $1.50 per bar in the local drugstore, currently. And it contains 32 grams of protein. The perfect post-workout snack, it seems.
The only problem? The body doesn't digest it well at all. There are times when it sits in my stomach like lead, and other times, when my body can't wait to get rid of it. Empirically tested, two out of two times, that is what happened to me. Just last night, I woke up at 3 a.m. with a stomach-ache because of that damn bar.
Are snacks doomed to be unhealthy?
Back when I was a vegetarian for a brief two years, the one thing I missed was to have a snack that did not contain either an overdose of sugar, of fat, or of bread. With the exception of perhaps a nut-bar, a fresh juice, or chewing gum, those are pretty much your choices, walking down a street:
- A chocolate-bar: high in fat & sugar
- A burger, sandwich, or a pizza-slice: high in fat, starch, and limited protein
- Fries or chips: high in starch and fat
- A carbonated drink: high in sugar (excl. the light versions) and extremely bad for your teeth
A new era?
Interestingly enough, due to external pressures, I hear that certain supermarkets are changing the layout of their stores, removing snacks and junk-items from the register, and replacing them with healthy options like fruit. Equally interesting, (forgot where I read this) they are expecting a multi-million euro loss because of that policy.
Certain tricks do seem to work in raising those profit-margins. While a kilo of regular apples currently costs around the €1.50/kilo mark, pre-peeling and -cutting those apples, raises that price to ca. €8/kilo. Ka-ching!
The 
