Ann's House Soy Energy Blend Snack Review

As a card-carrying member of the "Eaten every fast-food burger in the last year," I'm amazed by the number of "healthy" foods people eat which would have never been considered edible 20 years ago.  Have you ordered a salad from a restaurant lately?  Besides a small amount of lettuce, it appears that random weeds are being used as filler.  I would not be surprised in the least if a dandelion appeared on my fork one of these days.  Seaweed?  Milkweed?  Swiss chard?
If restaurants wanted to introduce "color" to a salad in order to make it more appealing to the eye, why not use food coloring?  Who needs color anyway?  After applying 7 tablespoons of Ranch dressing, you won't be able to see the salad anyway.

Granola and energy bars are the latest culprit in this "they'll eat anything we brand as healthy" craze.  What if I just want a peanut butter chocolate chip (with frosting) Clif bar?  Nope...They'll offer a macadamia nut, soy enriched paperweight that leaves a gritty taste at the back of my throat. (On a separate note, why does the term trail mix have to infer a healthy snack?  My perfect trail mix is a bag full of skittles, ding dongs, pistachios, and Skor candy bars.  I'd hike the hell out of a mountain with that in my pack.)


This trend is evident as I recently tried Ann's House soy energy blend "mix".  This is sort of a trail mix which blends toasted soy nuts, almonds, pumpkin kernels and dried cranberries.  It is 150 calories per serving, while dishing up 7 grams of protein, and 8 grams of fat.

Upon looking at the container, I would have not been surprised to see a parakeet on the front, with the words "Ann's House budgie mix."  It's like some demented person in the R&D department at Ann's House decided to see how many thousands of people they could get to eat Hamster food, by packaging it up all pretty in order to fool us.  It's not like this hasn't been tried before.  (i.e. Slim Jims-->Pupperoni)

Despite my initial misgivings, I treated this like I do all food--by devouring it.  I went "trail mix missionary position" at first. (eating small handfuls to get the flavor of everything at once) Unfortunately, there is not much flavor here.  In fact, if you were to take out the cranberries, I think this would qualify as ground mulch.  In order to distinguish what each ingredient was contributing, I ate each separately.  The cranberries and almonds were quite nice.  The pumpkin kernels had no defining taste.  This contributed very little to the mix.  What was eye-opening, were the soy nuts.
I've never had soy nuts before, and not just because the name sounds dirty to me.  Who really eats soy nuts?
On the bright side, soy nuts have a satisfying crunch.  Unfortunately, this does not offset the fact that they taste very similar to earthworms.  Don't get me wrong--you could probably deep fry these and top them with seasonings to create a satisfying snack--but the same effect could probably be created using earthworms.

I'll summarize the negatives and positives of this snack:

Negatives:
--Very expensive for parakeet food
--My parakeet wouldn't touch anything in here
--Could have used some maize kernels for added "color"
--Cranberries are the highlight of the mix--how bad is that?

Positives:
--"Earthy" breath
--Claiming that I am full-on Herbivore
--The first self-sustaining food.  (Without giving too much detail, I'll just say that this mix looks the same "coming out" as "going in".  Based on my scientific analysis, if one were to rewash their "waste", you could keep re-eating this mix for roughly 3 years before needing to supplement with other foods.)

I did not like this Sam I Am.  When swallowing, I declare Damn.
I did not like it on a trail.  Whoever created this should go to jail.

Based on the cranberries and healthy statistics, I give Ann's House soy energy blend 1 star.  It can be purchased at Costco, Walmart, or any expensive online retailer of fine nuts or pet food.