Pepsi Blue

Somewhere between food and drink there is PowerGel, a "fast fuel" designed for those who want stylish sustenance delivered in a space-age foil pouch. Edible gels may seem to put us one step closer to the better-living-through-chemistry dream of the Jetsons' food pills, but the bypassing of digestion's first step is the gelmaker's only notable accomplishment. This is great if you're Robocop and want to eat from a baby-food dispenser. Most of us, however, have a hard-to-shake cultural belief that one must chew one's own food.

PowerGel (no relation to the explosive emulsion of the same name) is a concentrated carbohydrate paste manufactured by Nestlé subsidiary PowerBar Inc. and sold in 41g hits that cost about a dollar. PowerBar has been oozing the stuff out since 1996, but recently began pushing the product harder, trying to improve its flavor, and even changing the name of the annual running event it sponsors in New York each year.

When nutriment can be compressed from main meal to quick snack, certain people become interested. Curiously — given that one would expect little from people too lazy to chew — most of these people are athletes. Toothless marathoners now have a large number of high-energy goos to choose from: Leppin Squeezy was the first introduced, way back in 1986, and now shares the shelves at GNC with GU Energy Gel, Car-BOOM, Clif Shot, Hammergel, Fireball, Extreme Blast, Pocket Rocket and a host of others. (Many of which, for some reason, also have names that sound vaguely like explosives.)

So why haven't these convenient colloids conquered all other cuisine, taking the food world by storm and causing an economic and social realignment equivalent to the development of agriculture? That would be the taste. PowerBar began with Strawberry Banana, Vanilla and Lemon Lime flavors, and has since added gelled versions of Chocolate, Tropical Fruit, Tangerine, Green Apple and Raspberry Cream. Some of these contain caffeine and some do not.

These gels promise a source of instant energy like nothing seen since Popeye's spinach. But while Popeye's greens go down in one mighty gulp, PowerGel takes a bit more getting used to.

Transporting it from the package into your mouth is the first adventure. You must tear through not only the foil wrapper but also the inner plastic liner. The small membrane will yield to just enough pressure to transform the PowerGel into spider-web-shooter-like weapon. Death by asphyxiation is possible if you aim it directly at the back of the throat.

As it turns out, squeezing is not the recommended method of dispensing PowerGel. The safest way to experience the goo is to use your teeth: Bite down at some point on the teat and drag the foil pouch until all the nutrient goo sits on your tongue like decomposing toothpaste. This way, you can enjoy as much or as little as desired.

In terms of what's inside, PowerGel looks like something off of Nickelodeon — goop, not gel, is the appropriate word. It adheres to your throat like a space-age lubricant, refusing any attempts to swallow it. Though PowerBar "recommends that you drink a few mouthfuls of water" to aid absorption, the true purpose is to remove the muck from your mouth as quickly as possible. I eventually hit upon the trick of taking small amounts of the gel and chasing each with a swig of water, and following the discovery of this rhythmic motion, my mouth recovered sufficiently to register the flavor.

The fruit punch was the most pleasant, feeling and tasting something like Gummi Bears in their chewed state, just before you swallow them. (This makes sense, since there's no fruit listed in the ingredients, just "natural flavor.") The chocolate flavor, on the other hand, felt like pudding and had the syrupy sweetness of another unnatural Nestlé product, Quik. Strawberry banana was the worst of the bunch, mixing the tartness of yogurt, the bitterness of unripe bananas and the je ne sais quoi of dental fluoride treatments. Whereas the chocolate pudding made me question the nutritional value of the gel, strawberry banana flavor made me question the expiration date.

How effective are these gels? Although each pouch guarantees a half hour of extra energy, I felt no difference in effect between the gooey nutrients of the pouch and that of a simple granola bar. But they are more convenient, and — being pre-chewed as well as pre-packaged — are ready for fast absorption by the body. That makes PowerGel convenient for those who feel that the extraneous edible material in solid carb sources, such as slow-digesting fiber, is just too much extra baggage for a marathon, bicycle race or half-hour on the Stairmaster.

For now, I'll stick with my granola bars — that is, until PowerBar comes out with a carbohydrate pill. In chocolate almond flavor, preferably.

— D.P. Barsam (barsam@hotpop.com)