What else can you say when a candy bar is so straightforward, so blatant in its desires?

(I’ve lost my original, quickly torn and crumpled wrapper, my sole souvenir of Toronto, so this pic comes courtesy of The Candy Critic.)

I like perusing the candy aisle in other countries–in the Netherlands, for instance, it’s all licorice. In Switzerland, you can barely find any dark chocolate. And in Canada, which seems just like the U.S. in so many ways, you find maple-flavored everything (maple Cadbury Flake, maple Coffee Crisp, maple Kit-Kat), and Smarties that come only in red and white (“Save the red ones for last, eh!” says the label).

The Eat-More, though, appealed because it seemed to be a homegrown candy bar, not just a Cadbury product tweaked for the local market. Once I unwrapped it, I saw it falls into the somewhat unappetizing category I’ve come to call the “turd bar,” for lack of a more poetic term. Baby Ruth, all lumpy with peanuts, is the ur-turd bar–none of those artful swirls of chocolate enrobing a luscious center. Without too much imagination, you know what’s inside the BR, and if you don’t chew it carefully, well… OK, you get the concept.

The Eat-More isn’t lumpy, but it’s a pretty unappetizing combo of dark chewy toffee holding together lots of chunks of peanuts. It kind of reminded me of going hiking with my mom and my brother, where we stand around in the middle of the trail poking at a piece of scat while they remark on what the critter could be based on the visible vestiges of its diet. The Eat-More could just as well be hiker scat, at the end of a long backpacking trip when he’s got nothing but gorp left.

Now I’ve made the Eat-More sound so disgusting that you won’t believe me when I say it was great. It was perhaps the ideal urban energy bar–all the quickie protein and sugar, and none of the stigma of an actual energy bar, which we know are eaten only by rock-climbers and baby boomer women and, oh, fine, people, very much like myself perhaps, who were getting over a stomach ulcer. (I still can’t look at a Luna Bar, especially those lemon ones.)

The ingredients are basic and not too toxic, but it’s still complicated enough to merit actually buying, rather than just making at home–unlike those Larabars, which are very much in the turd bar category, and happen to be just dates and nuts and other dried fruit pressed into a bar. I’ve got all that stuff at my house, and it won’t cost $3.50 and look like a turd if I just eat it in handfuls.

And there’s no chocolate. This might seem like a major drawback, but as an on-the-go snack, it avoids being too decadent. Which means you can just…eat more. Eh.