Date: 2010-01-14
To: Good food isn't sexy.
Miles today: 0.0

Do you read food labels? I only just started to, sort of, a few years back. Only a label dabbler really, I could never compete with some of you out there ¢ You, who know glutens, antioxidants and organics. However, in my own way I¢m growing. Here¢s why.During my last AT hike, while hiking with this kick-ass athlete of a hiker named LB or soon to be named Bloody Mess, she trounced me into the trail with her stamina. Truth be know, many of the best athletes on the AT every season are female. They regularly knocked out huge, sunrise to sunset days. LB and I hiked about a month together and on several of those days she buried me with her endurance. After a particularly tough day, LB theorized that I wasn¢t taking in enough carbs. When my shirt started smelling of ammonia, she thought I was going into a form of ketosis (my body was feeding off my muscle to simplify things.) So, LB walked the grocery store aisles with me one town stop and I started reading labels a bit more in earnest. It made a difference and my stamina increased greatly ¢ good food (good tasting too) doesn¢t necessarily look like it is though. That¢s why those labels become important.My normal grocery store exploration has taken me to the heralded aisles of Whole Foods. Better know as ¢Whole Paycheck¢ when I lived in Chicago. Anyway, I should state that I hate most camp food and this comes from a person who is definitely not a food baby. Sure I love steak and chicken and mashed potatoes, but I adore Indian, Mexican, German, Japanese, Cajun, Seafood, Italian, etc. I¢ve even enjoyed Scotland¢s haggis (trust me, you don¢t want to know.) So when I say I don¢t like camp food it¢s coming from a palette of taste buds that have a wide spectrum of acceptability.I¢ve recently discovered Larabars, Kind and Think products. The most hideous looking of the group is the Think Green ¢ Blueberry Noni. I have no idea what the heck a Noni is other than it appeared as a song lyric that went something like: ¢¢¦With a hey noni noni.¢ Of course, some of you label aficionado¢s I referenced up top now know just how hopeless I am (shrug and a sigh). If you¢re old enough to know what Soylent Green is, well this must be what it looked like. (Soylent Green was a 70¢s movie, with Farrah Faucet, where the old people of the Earth were ground up into energy bars for the younger people to live on during their thru-hikes, only the younger folks didn¢t know that, until the end of the movie. Sorry, if I just ruined that for those of you getting ready to pop that DVD in.) Anyway, this Think Green ¢ Blueberry Noni thingy is delicious. No really. Never mind that it¢s packed with alfalfa grass juice and broccoli powder, or that it looks like olive drab, ground up, old people. One look and you know if you can get it down it will pay big dividends in stamina on the trail. If only it were sexy looking, but it really tastes good. And unlike Cliff sawdust bars, these I¢ll eat. The Think Organic bars are also good as well as the mentioned Larabars and the Kind fruit and nut. Mmm. The energy bars that are consistently awful are the healthy bars that try to be chocolate bars ¢ a miserable failure almost always ¢ sort of like polishing a sneaker, it just can¢t pull off the masquerade.It may be tantamount to culinary blasphemy to say that a blueberry noni is every bit as good as a Hostess cupcake, but remarkably its true. And the followers of everything organic would also likely view a cupcake comparison to a Think Green noni bar health food heresy, so be it. I live by no food rules other than what taste good gets eaten, repeatedly and in mass quantities on the trail. I am my own man and yes, I like cute Hostess cupcakes and milk chocolate dipped Oreo¢s with my hot coco at night. Only a real man could admit this. And quiche! Yes, I love quiche too. There I said it, I¢m coming out (of the kitchen that is).   If I could have a Grand Marnier Souffl© in the woods I would, but alas.This hike, I¢ll save the sugar crashes for nighttime when it will only help to deepen the sleep and stay with the healthy stuff during the daily climbs. I¢m jazzed about this season¢s hiker food even though it won¢t be winning any drooling contests; it definitely represents a leap in my food quality awareness ¢ another evolution thanks to thru-hiking.