You know what, Quest Bar? I’m fucking done with you.
Yes, you have 20 grams of protein, no added sugar, and a shit-ton of fiber (no pun intended). What you don’t have is a remotely sane outlook on a person’s relationship with food.
Everything you are and everything you put into the fitness and nutrition industries positively reeks of eating disorder. Don’t try to tell me you never saw it that way. Don’t even.
Perfect nutrition? Bitch please, there ain’t no such thing. “Perfect” nutrition depends solely on the individual and their needs at that exact moment. Your claim of perfect rests entirely on the fact that your protein bars have no sugar, no carcinogenic sweeteners, and are also an appetite suppressant. Your claim of perfect rests entirely upon the shoulders of a diet culture that has demonized sugar, glorified borderline starvation, and turned the low-carb lifestyle into a one-size-fits-all religion. There’s nothing perfect about that. Fuck you.
Cheat clean? Are you saying that eating something sweet is considered cheating? Are you turning my delicious lovely cakes and muffins into terrible sins for which I pay penance later? Do I avoid the sin if I “cheat” with your “guiltless” offerings? Food has no inherent moral value. Fuck you. And am I supposed to consider you “clean”? Your mini bricks of non-sugar sweetener, fake fiber, and processed protein? If I eat this thing as a replacement for sinful treats made out of real food, do I avoid getting “dirty”? You say clean and I see a girl who can’t go to sleep until she measures every single bite she’s going to put in her mouth tomorrow and records it for a full nutritional analysis to make sure she stays “clean”. Fuck you.
…. and your marketing. I can’t believe you actually print this shit. Intense, obsessed, not normal. Don’t stop. Don’t sleep. Better than yesterday. Never stop. Is this supposed to be fucking motivational? Because I read this drivel and see an exhausted tormented girl on the elliptical after three back-to-back boot camp classes who only got four hours of sleep but she’s intense, obsessed, not normal, and she doesn’t stop. I can’t muster a fuck you big enough for this one.
You couldn’t even let us have the good side of it. Protein is great, it makes your muscles strong and rebuilds you after a workout. But you had to make it all about that perfect low-carb lifestyle. Fiber is great. It helps you poop good. But you had to make it about suppressing hunger and ignoring base needs for the sake of superficial body composition. Low-sugar is great (for some people). But instead of reaching out towards those people and the medical benefits they could find, you had to make it about how sugar is evil and makes me fat. Fuck you.
I’ve even managed to convince myself your protein bars taste good. Maybe I’d feel otherwise if you hadn’t worked so hard to condition me into equating that taste with perfection and guiltlessness. I deserve to eat whatever food my body wants or needs to carry me through life. Eating something with carbs or sugar will not make me “dirty” or a “cheat”. This culture’s relationship with food is in a horrific place already and we do not need this disordered bullshit steamrolling us with the false illusion of healthy “perfection”.
Quest Bar, you will never get another dollar from me. You a two-faced bitch perched atop the wall of diet culture and I am done with you.