I Eat 4 to 6 (Sometimes More) Bars a Day. Anyway, These Are My Favorites.

When I was a kid, I'd pack the same handful of things for lunch every day. There'd always be a bag of pretzels. A bottle of water. (Sometimes it was juice!) Dessert, maybe a cookie or Reese's Cup. But always. Always. A bar of some sort. Granola with chocolate chips. Soft-baked, with strawberry jam. Peanut butter and chocolate chip, packed with protein.

No matter how old I was—we're talking five years old, to high school, to the last time I was in an office—someone would always groan, as if it was a personal offense: "Why don't you have a sandwich?"

Man, I don't know! Bread gets moldy. The thought of that sitting in a brown bag is gross. I never vibed with cold cuts. Once, a friend spilled pickle juice all over the lunch table, and that's when I nearly hurled on top of the mess and realized I hated pickles. At first, the breakfast bar habit was process of elimination, since I hated just about everything that went inside a sandwich.

Now, 20 years after my intrepid little self first discovered the joy of a Chewy bar? Bars are a religion. On an average day, I eat four to six of 'em, sometimes more. Two in the morning. Two for lunch. Usually one at night. This means I either never shit, or shit all at once. I will not explain what that means further. When you add up two decades of bar consumption, you end up with a person who has an embarrassingly encyclopedic knowledge of this rectangular form of food, because I eat an embarrassing amount of them.

For granola bar fan service, the morbidly curious, and whoever else would read something like this, I've put together the 10 most important bars in my life. The group you'll see here ranges fairly wildly in nutrient, sugar, and protein amounts, though consensus from actual dietitians is that a protein bar can work as a meal in a pinch. Most of the options here sit in the 200- to 300-calorie range, which is just about enough to eat for breakfast alone, or pair with actual food (like that sandwich) for lunch and dinner. Just, uh, don't have six per day. That's my journey. I hope one of these bars helps you find yours.

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