The Plastic Lurking in Your 'Perfect' Protein Bar

All components of this image were derived from public domain images and combined by the author

Living with Crohn's disease means I've spent over a decade trying to manage inflammation while maintaining an active lifestyle. Like a canary in a coal mine, my body is extremely sensitive to hard-to-pronounce ingredients lurking in food to the stress of the environmental load from the world around us. As both an athlete and someone who runs a gluten-free bakery, I'm constantly navigating between optimal nutrition and convenient fuel sources, so the idea of a "perfect” protein bar from David had me interested. I didn't realize that their desire to deliver a bar with very little fat (to keep the protein ratio high) would have me spending hours researching one ingredient that pulls together two of the trendiest topics in health right now - the ubiquity of microplastics and the dangers of ultra-processed foods.