Why we made these

I'm allergic to peanuts. That one fact has shaped more grocery trips than I can count.

For years, finding a protein bar I could actually eat meant the same routine: pick up the box, flip it over, scan the allergen line, find "may contain tree nuts," or “made in a facility with products which also contain nuts”, put it back . Repeat. Most days I left with nothing.

When I started looking into it, I found I wasn't an outlier. There's a large group of people quietly running the same scan in the same aisle. And there was a second thing I hadn't expected: nut allergies rarely travel alone. Plenty of people avoiding nuts are also avoiding soy, or peas, or a handful of other ingredients that show up in nearly every bar on the shelf. The "allergy-friendly" options weren't friendly to them either.

So, for years I made my own protein bars in my kitchen, tweaking the recipe as I went. We decided to build the bar recipe backwards. Instead of starting with a recipe and taking things out, we started with what had to stay out — then worked to find a formulation that actually tasted good within those limits.

That last part mattered more than we expected. A bar you're allowed to eat but don't want to eat isn't a solution. It's just a different kind of disappointment.

This is the bar I wanted to find on the shelf.