Taste of Penn Part VI: NuGo Nutrition Bars

This is part of the series about the Taste of Penn.

I got/am still pretty sick with a cold/cough/fever/snot flowing out of my nose so I decided to curl up and burn and freeze (oh fevers.) while reading The Da Vinci Code instead of blogging last night. The last time I had read The Da Vinci Code was the night before/up to when I turned 13. It's kind of weird reading it again, because I had missed many facts and I think I misunderstood some of the plot line, too. Or, well, I guess I read it with both more skepticism and an open mind this time (if that makes sense. Skepticism, because "APPLE" was a really obvious answer (although factually incorrect, I think?, because the Bible never mentions an apple. It mentions fruit, yeah, but not apples), and everything is just implausible and bombastic. Open mind, because I guess I know more about religion now and I see each character in a more neutral light now than I did before. I guess the worst part of growing up for me is that I stop believing in fiction, and Dan Brown isn't that cool to me anymore.

Anyway.

My last blog post about the Taste of Penn concerns NuGo Nutrition.

In all honesty, I nearly skipped going to this table, because I figured it'd be something like Zone bars or Balance bars, and I'm not really interested in them. But I had pretty much looked around at all the other tables, so I decided to take a sample from NuGo and ask the cliche question. The representative sounded pretty knowledgeable. "We use REAL dark chocolate. You know where we get our cooca from? The best place from chocolate in the world. Java." (At least, I think that's what he said. I apologise if my memory is a bit off).

And that sparked my curiosity, because nutrition bar companies don't usually boast about the chocolate part of the bar. They usually boast about the protein content or glycemic index.

The representative at the table and I ended up talking a lot. Dude dislikes Zone bars too, when I mentioned them. "You know what's in those things? Chocolatey coating! Not real chocolate!", which is actually kinda true since a lot of chocolate flavoured nutrition bars don't have any real chocolate; it's all chocolate flavouring. A few years ago, the Hershey Kissables were labelled as chocolate candy, and not actual chocolate because there was no actual chocolate (cocoa) present in the candy. Likewise, many companies, to cut costs, don't actually use real chocolate in their chocolate flavoured products; it's just this really cheap, weird-textured waxy sweet stuff that offers no flavour, but visually looks like chocolate (and I didn't copy that from the pamphlet, but it appears that the pamphlet used the same adjectives to describe it. Funny.). And, being visual consumers, we buy into it.

According to the pamphlets, there are 7 subsets of NuGo, each catered to a certain audience. At least the CRISPY CAT brand touts itself as a candy bar as opposed to some healthy granola bar, which Kudos sort of advertises. In looking at the nutrition label of the mint flavoured NuGo Dark, which the representative gave me for free (Whoot!), I think that it's pretty comparable to Clif Bars; 10 g protein, around 200 calories, 5 g fat...

I was pretty happy with the representative's knowledge. I asked him why only some of his bars had the "USDA Organic" label on it, and he said that most of the bars ARE basically organic, but they aren't certified because it costs a lot of money. TRUE.

He then agreed with me that Clif Bars are pretty much the only other company that offers nutrition bars made with "better/more natural" ingredients. They also retail at Penn for similar prices: $1.89 for Clif Bars, and a purported $1.79 for NuGo Bars (they haven't come out at Penn yet). Either way, it's more expensive than buying Clif Bars at Shoprite or Costco, because Penn Dining likes to rip us off.

In all honesty, I prefer Clif Bars over NuGo Bars because they taste better, but that's just a personal preference. The nice side of NuGo compared to Clif is that they aren't ridiculously sweet. Then again, I do have my cold and everything tastes less delicious :( Having a cold and eating food is like sleep-eating (not that I've ever done any sleep-eating, but Chowder has, in one episode): you eat all the food, but you don't get to enjoy it.

One issue I have with one of the pamphlets is: "The vegetable fat in fake chocolate is an unhealthy saturated fat that raises bad cholesterol". Oh my bad, palm oil is apparently high in saturated fat, according to Wikipedia.

At some point, the representative mentioned the whole thing about various companies starting out with good ideas, e.g. the South Beach, Kellogg's - the people who started these diets all had this whole natural, fresh foods diet, but now, the stuff "they", as a company, sell is pretty unhealthy.

Since I might end up working for some food company, I asked the representative about his job. He said that he majored in Management and he gets free NuGo bars. Another business major?! Whyyy!?! As a science major, will I always be in the shadows, 7 degrees away from the free food and outward face of the company? It seems like every food company I check out wants business majors!

I think this is a sign that I should go to med school :(

Dude isn't this pretty?

Chocolate [Ear Candy?]

When I was younger, the phrase "eye candy" made me think of this. Evidently, it's supposed to mean something else but I think that it's an ugly phrase. Just my 2c. Anyway, I figured that this is literally ear candy [please, continue laughing. I enjoy hearing people laugh at my ... puns]:

My friend SVC from HK got them for me for my birthday last year although it arrived in the mail a few months later than expected... Either way, it's so cute :D I wasn't going to use them since I had really amazing headphones already. Unfortunately, last week the right bud's wire seemed to have gotten disconnected... so only the left earbud transmit sound now. I guess it was expected since I've had them since January 2008, and they've been smooshed by my track stuff, my school stuff, heavy books, my laptop, dropped on the floor... etc. This, however, signifies the fact that I am a consumer. I consume. I honestly don't have to use these new headphones; my old ones still half WORK; they're tolerable. This just shows that I've become materialistic.

Another piece of evidence to support my materialistic tendencies has to be this. My dad went to Switzerland and he bought a lot of chocolate. I didn't even know he was going to buy chocolate actually... Usually he gets utensils. I'm not kidding. If you look in our cabinet, you will see at least 5 plates from different countries, 17 international vessels [including shot glasses and mugs...], 9 small spoons... I really wonder why we get this stuff every time we/my dad goes to another place. Oh yeah, right, we're materialistic.

So anyway, I've never had Godiva chocolate before so I decided to bring a box with me back from home after "fall break" [autumn holidays]. I decided to bring half white chocolate and half dark chocolate, since I like both depending on my mood [but milk chocolate doesn't interest me much].

I did eat some so far and I guess I'll blog about each one later, but again, this demonstrates my inclination to CONSUME. Do I sound like I'm writing an essay? I had an in-class midterm essay yesterday, which is why my diction is so formal. The lack of time was mortifying.

More Frey Chocolate

Rum milk chocolate; tasted a bit nutty and dessicated-coconutty. I've never had rum before so I don't know if there really was "rum" inside the chocolate.


Dark chocolate truffle... The ganache almost tasted sour, which was a bit bizarre.

Home...

BACK home! I got back on Friday night at 9:40pm ish, even though I should've been back at 7:15pm [traffic is terrible. I had traffic out of Philly, INTO NY, then OUT OF NY. What a wonderful experience. At least I had food :)]

I noticed that nothing much has been consumed at home... my brother likened it to the Pullman strike, in which nothing could get done in Chicago while the RR workers were on strike... in other words, if I'm not home, no food gets eaten. Even the freakin' pistachios are untouched!

Anyway, it's nice to be home and eat food at any time I want.

One thing that people in college keep talking about is the archetypal "home-cooked meal". I haven't had one yet, actually, and I don't really care for one. I don't get why everyone seems so in love with "home-cooked meals" when most families in the U.S. prefer to eat out anyway.

Strange culture.

Anyway, I did get to eat meals with my brother and sister so that was really nice since we could do the whole "eating and meeting" thing.

While I was at college, my dad had a business trip in Basel, Switzerland, and he brought back a lot of chocolate. It was also really expensive chocolate. I don't really think it tastes that much different from a dark chocolate bar, but perhaps there is something in the ingredients that makes it special. I don't know. I mean, the presentation evidently is better than a normal chunk of chocolate, but I personally just like dark chocolate bars.

This was the espresso chocolate, which was some dark chocolate espresso ganache covered in dark chocolate. It was okay but not worth however much it cost. I like cocoa powder more...

OH so we had two coconuts! My brother and I shared one, and we're gonna consume the other one at some point in the future...

After drinking the liquid portion endosperm, I sought to crack open the coconut in order to share the remaining endosperm with my brother. I accomplished this by throwing the coconut onto concrete since both the hammer and the knife refused to crack open the coconut.

Below is the splat created by the coconut when I threw it. Unfortunately, we could not retrieve all the pieces of the coconut. Coconut shells remarkably resemble autumn leaves.

We somehow cracked it open from there...

My brother likes frozen blueberries [as do I] so we have a stash of them.

More Lindt.

1. I like white chocolate. There's no cocoa in it, but I still like it, as a candy. It's sweet and creamy, even though I don't like either of those in milk chocolate, because milk chocolate just seems to be... vacillating between real chocolate [dark chocolate] and milk candy [white chocolate].
The Cresta was really smooth, which I like, and the centre had a special nutty filling, which was more gooey than the hard outer shell. I just ate a piece that had been in the freezer [I like chocolate from the freezer. It snaps nicely.], and yes, you can tell there is filling.
Note the shape.
NOTE THE SHAPE OF THE CHOCOLATE BELOW!
The one chocolate from the pile that was smooshed. I supposed it didn't fit in the mould correctly, or it didn't harden by the time it reached the packaging deptarment... or something.
Salvador Dali chocolate... anyone?
The funnest one to eat. Seriously. I enjoyed the change in shape. Anyway, the proper one is below:
This is a "correctly" shaped Lindt/Lindor.
It was really smooth, and appeared to be uniform and felt, to me, just like a typical milk chocolate chunk. However, I later ate one that had been sitting in 30 degrees C temperature, and the outer shell was pliable and I didn't even have to bite it, for it to disintegrate into pieces in my mouth. This time, I could tell there was a middle layer, that tasted kinda caramelly, but that totally could've been imagined.
Super milk!
Note the shape. This one has a DEEPER INDENT. WHY?! It was super smooth... why ruin it by REMOVING a slice of it!? It tasted just like the Lindor, except that it was creamier. Though, when I consumed both frozen, they tasted the same, both taste and texture-wise [sans the dent aspect, though].

These actually look appealing too. They're better than the misshapen truffles.

MP's Chocolate!

So, during dessert [after which we ate pizza. Don't ask.] at MP's grad party, I tried three chocolates, from this rather dandy tin box of chocolates. It was a Polish brand. There were five flavours in total, but I tried the chili, coconut, and brandy flavoured ones since they seemed to be the most "exotic".
The chili one was a huge disappointment. Actually, the label just says "HOT CHOCOLATE", which implies that it is either a high-temperature-chocolate-drink flavoured, or a spicy flavoured chocolate [with the chili pepper, right there!]. It was neither, unless you count the fact that it was probably 35 degrees C. In this case [or should I say, in this tin], the whole box of chocolates were hot chocolate. Meaning that the brandy was hot brandy, and the coconut was steamin'.
In short, the "Hot Chocolate" flavour tasted like a dark chocolate truffle and did not taste even a bit peppery or chili-ful or spicy or zingy. Rather huge disappointment, as I wanted to measure my home-made chili chocolate cake [from a few years ago] with something that's actually in industry.
The "White Chocolate and Coconut" flavoured chocolate was really textured, though. No, really, I honestly. Fell. In love. With. It. The taste of coconut was very prevalent, which made up for the failure of the "Hot Chocolate" flavour earlier. There are some brands of chocolate in which the coconut is basically jam-packed in sugar, like the interior of an Almond Joy. This one, however, was literally "jam"-packed, in the sense that it was NOT a saturated dessicated coconut mass. Instead, there was some sort of coconut "jam" or goo, which worked well with the harder outer shell. The white chocolate was extremely smoooooth, not sickeningly sweet, and paved the way for this gelatinous center.

So, I've never had brandy before. I don't drink. This flavour tasted like a normal truffle, except that there was this hint of something weird. I suppose the weird thing was the brandy. Because I couldn't detect brandy [as I don't know what it tastes/smells like], everyone decided to sniff it. It was actually quite amusing [Okay, not just amusing. I was literally choking with laughter] watching people sniff the brandy truffle.
The bright side is that none of the chocolates that I ate had dimples due to the plastic or metal moulds at the factory. Thus, I can conclude that they are better than the Lindor Truffles, with respect to their appearances. Actually, the Lindor truffles were definitely inferior to these, tastewise, too. Plus, no condensation, even though this is July, whereas Lindor's sweaty exterior was prevalent in January.
Looks like ganache. Smooth move, Choco Amore doods. [MP gave me some Polish chocolate for my birthday last year. It was really smooth too, which was a pretty huge feat considering it was a fruit and nut bar.]

Ferrero Rondnoir

Erm. Pop art. Pops in your mouth, not in your hands.

I was skimming through my Food folder because today, I did not eat anything remotely interesting. Okay okay, I lied. I had a burrito, with mango salsa. Oh, and green bean soup. And purple cabbage. However, I hadn't taken any pictures of that stuff today, and I KNEW that I had stuff in my Food folder about which I hadn't blogged.

And here is one, from January. The dark chocolate Ferrero. The Rondnoir. As a digression... it's rather funny how the first search result for "Ferrero Rocher" ends up with the USA company title of this, er, Italian brand. I suppose it's now more American than Italian. Sigh.

So, this was six months ago, before I knew how to take food pictures. Actually, to be fair, I'm still not great at taking pictures. But, at least I now take pictures of the interior of the food...
So, now, I shall explain the interior of the Rondnoir, since I did not take any pictures of it. Imagine... a cookie-like crunchy exterior, which confuses you, as the exterior looked like hard sprinkles rather than airy cookie crumbs. Imagine the gentle shell of wafer... and in your head, you're musing about how cookie crumbs can stick to a wafer. It doesn't seem possible. Perhaps it is due to the thin veil of hard, shiny, chocolate coating that binds all the crumbs together? Maybe it is the sheer magic of chocolate, the glue that binds the world together? KABLAM! You're suddenly thrown into oblivion, as you taste a sweet, soft, gooey, chocolatey spread... it's like chocolate jam, sans texture. No, no, it's texture is so utterly completely smooth, it feels as though you are skydiving. Or lounging in melted fudge. Or chilled ganache. Yes, ganache is the perfect descript- wait! What is this hard sphere doing in your mouth?! You bite it... and realise that it is a centre of bittersweet chocolate, the perfect accompaniment -or, rather, all the others [the cookie crumbs, wafer, ganache] were the perfect accompaniment to this frivolous finale. It's gone. You have devoured a copy of what everyone else, including you, has deemed as beauty. You hold the wrapper to your tongue, just to check that every atom has been exterminated. Your breaths inhale every modicum of life from the remnants. Your ears contain the final crinkles, never to be heard again.
Okay, you get the picture. Or, the taste. I'm sure a zillion other blogs have blogged about this... but you know that mine has, by far, the most sensual experience.

Divine Chocolate.

I like volunteering at the Essex County Environmental Center, and the largest events include Octoberfest and Earth Day. Since I'm very behind on posting, here is a snippet of a piece of chocolate I got on Earth Day while I was taking a break from the face painting station [I also ended up eating 4-5 organic hot-dog buns, and I met this guy, P, who works at the parks and he's really cool and has eyebrow piercings]. It was called "Divine Chocolate", and the lady at the desk informed me that it was Fair Trade, which I suppose is nice.
If you think about it though... if everything was forced to be Fair Trade, everything would cost more, and people will "complain", and there would be this black market of "cheap" stuff made from illegal labour. Basically, it's like child labour these days. Another unsolvable problem... This is looking at it from a global perspective, rather than purely a human rights or environmental perspective, because people are inherently selfish.
Anyway. This morsel of chocolate was extremely pretty and delicious :D
This has to be the most sensual chocolate picture, ever. Look at the detail... the drips... the decadence.... ahhhh.

Dove dark chocolate.

In our food drawer I found a piece of Dove chocolate. I doubt that my family has bought Dove chocolate since...2005, if ever. So, I assumed my dad got it from some company party or something. Turns out my brother got it from a sweet sixteen party, but I don't think that he wants it. Anyway. Piece number...13.
No grittyness, very smooth, not very bitter, but it was dark chocolate. It's okay, but it's kinda small. The wrapper was really thick and pretty. It was nice :) but maybe a bit above average. I hate the whole rating thing but maybe I should start rating? However, it's just my opinion, so I don't want to sound like a conceited ["con-sye-ted"] gourmand. So... 7/10? Eh, I dunno. Because in this case, everything that isn't dark chocolate would definitely get below 5. So, my rating system kinda sucks. But... anyway, Dove is up there.

I just realised that any chocolate probably would get at least a 7/10 because I love chocolate, and it's really difficult to rate it. So, scratch the "7/10" nonsense!