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Real food to eat

USC alumna Lara Merriken had the idea for Lärabar during a hike in the Colorado Rockies.

Rebekah M. Hendershot

For Lara Merriken, success sounded a lot like an overworked Cuisinart.

"It's a high-quality machine," Merriken said.

It had to be, to survive the mind-numbing, engine-scorching onslaught of nuts and dried fruits necessary to make an estimated 2,000 prototype energy bars over two years. It whirred its way through pounds of almonds, cashews, bananas, dates, dried apples, dried cherries and anything else Merriken added in her quest to create a nutrition bar that tasted like food. When the Cuisinart overheated, Merriken would leave it alone and come back later. It would start up again eventually, and so would she.

USC alumna Merriken spent two years in her kitchen developing LäraBar, a nutrition bar composed entirely of raw ingredients - very little processing other than the Cuisinart and a rolling pin, no baking, no artificial sweeteners, no ingredient lists with more than six items, all ingredients in plain English. The result is a mixed bag of flavors and textures, running the gamut from oddly bland to tongue-curling tart in varying degrees of crunchy and sticky. Devoid of preservatives, they are sold in an elaborate five-layer wrapper designed to prolong shelf life by barring light and oxygen.

Merriken, 36, who graduated in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in psychology, has condensed the creation of LäraBar into a short and tidy story. Inspiration struck, so the story goes, on May 26, 2000, during a long hike in the scenic Buena Vista area of the Colorado Rockies. Merriken, a health enthusiast since she developed an interest in healthy eating as a USC volleyball player, had brought trail mix along to eat. She preferred trail mixes to energy bars, she said, because they were "more real, more whole."

Munch, munch and the idea hit.

"People deserve to eat real food," Merriken said.

Merriken came down the mountain, literally and metaphorically, and changed her plans. A social worker in her 20s, she studied for two years to enter a Seattle program in naturopathic medicine. She turned it down and pulled out the food processor.

"Intuitively, I knew it was just the right thing for me," she said.

Money was tight. Between Cuisinart-enforced breaks, Merriken experimented with different ingredient combinations and proportions. She tested bars on friends, relatives and office workers, giving away samples in building lobbies and asking opinions. During research and development, she worked at a Whole Foods Market in Colorado, making contacts and learning the ins and outs of the health food business. At home, she banished her Labrador retrievers, Bob and Ray, from the kitchen so that she could work.

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