I’ve always been dubious about low-calorie and low-fat versions of regular foods. They generally do it by adding unpleasant quantities of fillers, bulking agents, artificial sweeteners, waxes, jelling agents and myriad other peculiar things that do you precious little good and you probably can’t pronounce. 

In theory I’d rather eat less of something good, than more of something rubbish. In practice I’ve never been very good at “less of”. So when I saw Alpen had got a low calorie version of their muesli bars I thought, well, how tough can it be to make low cal’ muesli snacks, that’s got to be easy to achieve without stirring in vats of gloop, right?

Right. It’s extremely easy. You just make them half the size. Of course, you sell them in the same sized packaging, and you charge exactly the same price - it just works out at twice the cost per gram, or half the calories per bar as you prefer… of course, you’ll need to eat two in order to get the same amount of food. 

I find it depressing that manufacturers have such a low opinion of consumers’ intelligence, and even more depressing that they’re usually right. Well hell, I didn’t suss it till I opened the first packet and wondered who’d stolen half my snack! 

(Note: Alpen bars are veggie not vegan containing milk powder)