Quick and dirty guide to the DAVID bar lawsuits
The class action, the EPG one
Hello. Free 1 today, was writing this up for Open Secrets but the subject matter is too big and expansive. Needs to be its own thing. Writing about the DAVID BAR lawsuit. It’s also live/being discussed in the Snake Super Health chat as well:
Get in there.
What’s up with the David bar lawsuits?
Here is what’s up with them. In January, a class action suit was filed against the company DBA as David Bars, which are a new-ish set of protein bars developed by the founder of the Rx Bar, the old peanuts/eggs/dates bar. The lawsuit alleges that David is lying about their bars’ macros and calories: that there is 25% more sugar and like 400% (that’s four TIMES) the fat in the actual bar compared to the nutrition label. Customers are suing; one of these suits where you’ll see an IG story asking you to sign up, and the payout in 2030 might be like $10.
There’s also another suit. Founders of other mostly protein businesses are alleging that David’s purchase of foodtech company Epogee, last May, is antitrust. The Epogee company invented a canola-derived non-caloric fat which David’s been using in their bars and which, the companies allege, they can no longer use in theirs since David’s purchase.
What’s a David Bar?
The reason this isn’t just a niche food industry news story or a protein industry/lifter news story (both exist) is because the David Bars are a tremendously successful mainstream brand. The bar is the most successful example of protein as an elite, upscale requirement in the American food marketplace. Simply, the David is a protein bar, constructed tightly and branded very well. It has a big, obvious, powerful and direct simple name, in a nice font, with a unitary colorscheme, in line with the OG Power Bar wrappers, evoking Kennedys, Michaelangelo, expensive fitness, things like that. The details are really nails. David, the statue is a beautiful, proportioned guy—not a mass monster 250-lb. bodybuilder. According to the Talmud he had red hair. The ads are reined in. The messaging is distilled. Very simply, David is protein for people who know what pronouns are, buy Fishwife, have money.
What about the bars themselves?
The bars themselves, the actual protein bars, are impressive technical accomplishments. They are novel, and better than old, competing bars. They smash the macros equation—the balance of protein, fat, and carbs—that these protein bars hewed to. Specifically, Davids have a lot of protein and are comparatively very low calorie. As much protein as the mega-protein bars marketed to serious lifters, but with a calorie number in line with feminine-marketed protein bars, or a can of red Coke. So basically a Quest bar with a calorie profile of a Luna. 50% more protein than a low-calorie bar… and nice packaging. Mainstream and elite.
This is unprecedented. Branding aside, it’s a legit technical accomplishment that this bar, as formulated, exists. Or was, until the lawsuit. And so the tension is this. Is this a new, proprietary-ingredient God tier bar with miracle macros… or some fitness grift that’s too good to be true?
What’s the difference between David bars and other protein bars?
Beyond the marketing and packaging, the David is wild because 3/4 of the bar’s calories come from protein—something hard to do with a processed food, and harder to do with a bar. Generally bars need some fats and sugars to taste good, and binders to keep the materials together during shipping. The first two add calories, the second are requirements. And honestly, even with these ingredients in most bars, they don’t taste good. The tension is the more fat and sugar a bar has, the better it tastes and the less weird it is to eat, but the more caloric it is... and the less useful it is as a protein snack. I’ve eaten 1,000 different bars in my life (stopped years ago) and they all were horrid. The past 30 years in protein has been characterized by companies grinding the edge of food science and trying to max out taste and unity and mouthfeel while minimizing calories and keeping protein high. It’s a very hard thing to do.
The story is David nailed this: a 150 calorie bar of which all but 38 cals are protein. Its macronutrient profile is indeed closer to lean fish or chicken breast (or whey powder) than a competing bars. The how, David says, of this achievement is through evidence-based experimentation. If you look at their ingredients list it’s a bit simpler: through cutting edge zero-calorie sweeteners, and a now proprietary calorie-free fat, EPG, that doesn’t add to the bar’s calorie totals. Sort of a fiber, but fat.
What’s the controversy here?
The controversy, or rather what’s being alleged in the lawsuit, is that one bar is not actually 150 calories but is closer to 275—40% more—coming from 11g of total fat (and not 2) and more grams of sugar. This number comes from results, presumably run/funded by the plaintiffs, found, per the story, at an accredited laboratory. It’s enough of a discrepancy to send someone to court. While the FDA does allow for wiggle room between what a label says and the actual food, it’s only about 20%. (This means, legally, a David bar can be either 120 cals or 180 depending.)
This matters, because David is being sold as a protein bar that’s almost entirely protein. The tests say it’s not. On a consumer level, if you’re eating a couple of these bars a day and the numbers are indeed this far off, that’s an extra 1600 or so calories a week, which is basically half a pound of fat. If this is the case, the David bar is completely not what it’s being marketed as.
What’s David say?
David posted the following paragraphs on their IG last night, and on CEO Peter Rahal’s X account yesterday as a reply:
Block quote:
The confusion comes from how calories are being measured. When food is burned in a device called a bomb calorimeter, it measures the heat released.
But nutrition labels aren’t based on how much heat something produces when burned. They’re based on what the human body can actually absorb and use for energy.
That distinction matters for ingredients found in David, such as fiber, sweeteners, and fat substitutes like EPG. Burning them in a bomb calorimeter treats them as fully digestible calories, even though they are not.
That’s why the FDA requires different calculation methods for these ingredients when determining calories.
David is 150 calories.
Can you translate this?
First, a bomb calorimeter is probably the second-most accurate way to measure calories, and the most accurate way to measure calories that isn’t completely disgusting. (The best way involves weighing food and a very detailed complete post-digestion urinalysis.) Effectively you light the food on fire and measure how much energy this reaction expels. This is kinda done in abstract scientific settings and calculates calories apart from digestion.
David guy is saying that nutrition labels differ from a bomb calorimeter’s readings because the company is legally allowed to ignore non-digestible/unabsorbable foodstuffs in their labels. A David bar, particularly, has fibers, sweeteners, and EPG, which are not digestible and therefore don’t need to be on its label, but which may be and prob. were tracked in a bomb calorimeter test, which is the tension.
My immediate analysis here of the statement is he’s saying the plaintiffs used a bomb calorimeter to measure what’s in the bar, and that measurement is not realistic to eating, and is less accurate than numbers on the label.
Is this true?
I don’t know. Complicated. But he’s right that the David label is a function of FDA’s nutrition labeling guidelines. And the guidelines are at best complicated, and allow for this sort of… entrepreneurial spirit.
What I mean is FDA labels are confusing if you want specific, actual info. For example a label must include fiber in grams, and those grams get included in the total carb (and calorie) number. Indigestible carb elements, like sugar alcohols, also must be included on labels, but those grams, however, aren’t included in the total calorie or carb numbers. Got it? And indigestible fats like EPG, don’t need to be put on the label at all, even though they’re in the bar and on the ingredients. Which is why David didn’t put them on the label.
Below is a technical explanation of what this exactly means. You can skip it if you want.
Here’s a clip of David’s ingredients list and macros breakdown from their website:
From one of their bars—chocolate chip. I’ll walk through the math below to explain how the label works. Note that when calculating macros, 1g fat=9 cal; 1g protein or carb=4 cal.
If you add up the total fat (2g), total carbs (12g) and total protein (28g) listed, you get 178 calories. (This is through 18cal from f, 48cal from c, 112 cal from p). But the David Bar’s total calories are somehow 150. This is because the FDA doesn’t require sugar alcohols (7g in this case) to be added to the calorie total. So the new math is 2f, 5c, 28p which is exactly 150 calories. It’s crazy. The numbers don’t add up, but they also don’t have to. And again, note that the EPG number is nowhere on the nutritional facts, just the ingredients.
What about the fat?
This is the wiggle room and what the lawsuit is about. I want to explain EPG a little bit. EPG, esterified propoxylated glycerol, is a canola/rapeseed oil derivative invented by Epogee, a food tech firm. EPG has a triglyceride structure (AKA is basically fat) but takes a different shape from actual fat molecules, and because of this shape and its particulars, it’s indigestible. EPG contains, per the FDA at least, only 8% of the calories of an identical amount of fat. So, 1g canola: 9 cals; 1g EPG, 0.7. And again, because of FDA laws, it doesn’t have to be mentioned on the nutrition facts.
How is this fat possible and what’s up with it?
It’s basically a modified fat that is not a fat. Technical definition and diagram you can skip over: Effectively EPG is a differently-shaped fat molecule than the rapeseed/canola oil it’s derived from. Fat is a carbon chain and fatty acids; the difference is that EPG has propelyne glycol units in the middle, between the carbon chain and the fatty acids. Propelyne glycol is, depending on who uses it, an anticaking agent, emulsifier, flavor agent, humectant, texturizer, stabilizer, solvent, antioxidant, antimicrobial agent, or thickener. It’s also used in antifreeze and brake fluids.
Here is a diagram comparing the two:
Basically, very simply, fats are a carbon chain connected to a fatty acid; EPG is a carbon chain with antifreeze in the middle, connected to fatty acids.
But let’s be a little more chill. EPG is said to taste like fat, with the same “structure, mouthfeel, lubricity, and thermal stability,” per the Epogee website. Those who follow David bars or food business may remember that the company bought out Epogee last May; the result is that David owns this ingredient/fat system and have put several other competing protein snack companies out of business. In a Q&A on Feed Me on Thursday, the CEO said that they sell EPG to other companies if they want.
So will David Bars make me fat? Is this a Seinfeld froyo/Mean Girls thing?
Two answers here. The first is no. EPG is probably mostly undigestible on a strict calories in/out level, and so the company has something here, technically anyways. At least on the very brutal and simple CICO (calories in, calories out) model. The bars are probably 150 calories strictly or within the 20% range. I don’t think they’re 2x the calories. The extra eight or nine grams of EPG fat are being dinged in the lawsuit for being in the bar and not on the label, but that’s a quirk of FDA legislation that David cannily avoided—or maybe based its messaging on. The elephant in the room, of course, is this is 10g of oil that you are shitting out with every bar and not digesting. Disgusting. But whatever. But the conversations elsewhere about the bar are aimed away from food specifics and towards protein, as a vague term, and branding, and ads, because David bars as a widget, as a business, are totally fine. We have to be fair here: these bars didn’t go on the market and replace fresh fruit or chuck roast. They’re replacing inferior nasty-ass protein bars. Ultimately, this is America and everyone has the right to sell uncanny technical garbage disguised as food within the limit of the law, which in this case is a 20% caloric wiggle room.
Why even have these half-ass labels?
I don’t know. Probably better than nothing. It’s helpful to be able to roughly understand what’s in a bar. This bar, as the lawsuit proves, is a technology problem: really the first instance the FDA label requirements have been gamed at such a high level. Ultimately, CEOs and VC people are going to be more nimble and dare I say smarter than regulators.
Are there specific ways to improve nutritional legislation?
While the Janet Malcolm/blackpill/Deviated Instinct answer is that food nutrition can never be solved and will always be gamed by bad actors, which is true on a long-term scale, the boring, idealistic answer is that the FDA’s GRAS (generally recognized as safe) exemption, which I wrote about here, is a specific, incompetent and breezy pain point that can be literally solved through legislation. GRAS defines the processed food landscape to a massive degree, it is too open, narratively let’s say, and so allows for antifreeze agents to be put in food; on a nuts and bolts level, it is completely worthless. Any consumer protections in this law have been gamed decades ago. It’s worthless. Not sure how to say it any clearer. The individual downstream result to this legislative rality is that normal Americans can’t can’t depend on legislation to be healthy and need to read up on these things in their free time. Or they eat straight up garbage.
Who’s behind the lawsuit?
No insight here but probably someone from one of the companies David put out of business when they bought Epogee. Even though I would not eat a David bar for $100, it’s not exactly a good faith lawsuit. Everyone in the food industry understands how labels work. You just need to find an amenable lab to create some bullshit. What David did, buying the reverse oil supplier, is cold, but not unfair. Lots of companies people love (like Auralee) are based on production bottlenecks/factory ownership. It’s a competitive world.
What’s wrong with David bars then? Why are they so demonic?
Companies aren’t evil because you can ignore them. These people aren’t making roads or infrastructure, they’re making candy bars. But they’re demonic because they say the bars are healthy and they are not healthy. And of course they’re not healthy. David uses technical language and smoothed out graphics to halo a bar that’s effectively black box protein ingredients, a sizable mass of indigestible sugar alcohols, numerous emulsifiers as well as a recent, canola-derived indigestible oil that is a complete black box for long term health results. Very simply, this stuff isn’t food. It’s silly putty with protein attached. But there is a photo of a Greek statue and healthful messaging. Better, if less interesting, to eat lots of tuna and get mercury poisoning, or eat chicken breast and take the soy/corn profile from the bird. I wrote about this in more detail yesterday here:
Before the news drop. Now this doesn’t mean the David bar is not an incredible widget, brilliantly sold and marketed, brilliantly presented to sucker publications who won’t gut check the statements made by the CEO here, which or maybe since, they are (tbh) mostly correct. Fascinating branding, impressive company, tight messaging, but we have to be real here. This isn’t a movie roll-out. We’re not Harvard Business professors. We don’t work for Bain. We’re people, and this is stuff people put in their body. It’s not food.
Is anything that David’s doing worse than other bars?
No. Worse than what? This is a VC-backed business up against the edge of the law; their bars aren’t any more or less poisonous than any of their competitors’, and the FDA legal environment they entered into is confusing, even for bodybuilders who have been reading labels for decades. It is a minefield of inconsistency, completely unhelpful for gen pop and the gulf between labels and the food in the wrapper or can is rarely described accurately or correctly by mainstream news.
Ultimately the “worst thing” about David bars—if we’re talking about what we can prove—are the ingredients in their bars that most/many other bars have. Maltitol, a sugar alcohol, has been shown to lead to microbial fermentation and diarrhea. Lecithin emulsifiers (sunflower, esp; in this bar I believe; it’s in many others, and in many powders) have been shown to negatively impact the gut in studies, with anecdotes (normal people) linking lecithins to just a nasty experience. Again, all things found in other bars. This is a very conservative grading. The EPG stuff to me is a seed oil test: if you think this new, indigestible oil is uncanny and probably harmful, well, why would the digestible version be any good?
What about EPG?
EPG might be nothing at all—maybe, because you can’t digest it, it’s not as bad as canola or rapeseed oils, which have been proven in long-term (not short-term) studies to oxidize and lead to bad health biomarkers.
Or maybe they’re identical to seed oils, because they are seed oils with antifreeze in them. That would be brutal.
Or maybe they’re worse because they tax the digestive system?
One cannot formulate a satisfying narrative answer here, since it’s all speculation. Things change, and I’m serious that it might indeed be nothing. To me the normal argument feels like you’re allowed to speculate on your health in terms of your food choices. You can stay away from certain things if you like. The idea that we have to eat the newest food tech ingredient because it’s generally recognized as safe is idiotic.
Are there benefits to eating high protein bars, even with all this bullcrap?
Even with the garbage in protein bars in general, for some people, on a not long-term scale…. maybe. Probably? One, yeah, I’m sure in some way eating protein bars leads to improved health results, because they are low in calories and high in protein (esp Davids), and generally the more lean muscle you have on your body the better you will age (not superficial). It just works. Two, the downstream effects of this indigestible silly putty canola oil (or let’s just say the emulsifiers and esters in all bars) may be limited or not as bad if you’re a very active individual, or do sauna, or eat a ton of kiwis. Three, just about everything on a grocery store shelf contains a sampling of the ingredients in this bar; 11% of propylene glycol production worldwide goes to food and cosmetics. Ultimately this food environment, while beatable, while truly not regulated, is not a death sentence:
and can be beaten on the individual level as my articles above show. But structurally this a failure of either regulatory bodies, or journalism. This is an Unsafe at Any Speed type of story. It is insane this stuff is most of what’s on the shelves.
So are David bars healthy?
Yeah, totally dude, half of the bar is made of an indigestible reverse seed oil that was invented a decade ago and half of it is gut-affecting esters and emulsifiers and stabilizers. You can totally eat a combo of those things every day forever without adverse side effects until a study comes around that satisfies you. The bar is basically a bunch of carrots stapled together. Keep eating them, see where that gets you.
Thanks for reading. If you like this sort of analysis and insight, pay for a subscription so I can keep doing this at a high level. If you think someone you know will like this, share it. No one is doing this but me. If I stop, it all ends.
SAMI REISS
This was a fantastic read, and genuinely answered all my questions in ways that other sources never do. Awesome, thank you!!!