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The Killer Bar – The Weird Side of the Internet

By Staff on October 10, 2025

The Killer Bar – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.

Do you like protein bars? Me, not so much. I’ll eat one if it’s all there is, but I don’t go out looking for them. I just feel like if they were really that good for you they wouldn’t taste like chocolate and peanut butter. Well, maybe peanut butter. I have never believed that those things are good for you, but that’s not what kept me away from that aisle in the supermarket. It’s because I know they’re a scam. Because I feel like all the health stuff is a scam. I don’t think any of the stuff will kill me, but it’ll only make my wallet light.

But there is a protein bar that might just kill me. In fact, it’s actually called the Killer Bar. And it’s deadly, no joke there. And that’s kind of the point. Fitness influencer Joe Wicks and Professor Chris van Tulleken had gotten frustrated with the state of nutrition bars, a poorly regulated world of health claims wrapping ultra-processed junk food. So they made a bar with perfectly legal ingredients that can cause diarrhoea, stroke and an early death. Of course it’s on the label, as a demonstration. They’re not trying to kill anyone. But I’m sure if it’s for sale, it’s also a TikTok Challenge in several of the world’s po dunks.

Van Tulleken explained to The Mail. “In fact, if a food has a health claim on its packaging, it’s pretty much a rule of thumb that it won’t actually be good for you. Joe and I are furious about the fact that a product like our bar can be marketed as healthy.

“He and I deliberately made our bar as unhealthy as we could, using all perfectly legal ingredients, to ask this simple question: why don’t foods that we know are harmful to health carry warning labels?

“At the moment, the foods with the biggest health ‘halo’ are protein bars – now a multi-billion-pound industry, with social media and sport health influencers relentlessly pushing them. Essentially, they’re pushing junk food.

It’s always been my personal understanding that if it tastes good, it’s probably not good for you.