We found a wrapper-free trail bar (and it’s delicious)

The biggest, shiniest things were front-and-center at Outdoor Expo. It was easy to get distracted by the overlanding section, where I enjoyed crawling into rooftop tents and the svelte, Icelandic MINK S camping trailer, which is about the size of a double bed but somehow feels spacious.

If the campers weren’t snazzy enough to give a car-camping tent self-doubt, the Isabella Camp-let trailer was there to finish the job. Folded up, it looks like a cross between the trunk of a Mustang and an IKEA storage bin. Set up in its full splendor, it’s probably the Buckingham Palace of tents. I say this without ever having gone on a luxury safari, or having visited Buckingham Palace, but I am certain that its multiple bedrooms and built-in furniture have more in common with a house than a tent.

In any case, I was on a mission, and the rooftop tents—even an extra-cushy Latitude Tents model perched atop an adorable vintage Mini Cooper—were not what I was seeking. It’s clear that overlanding is a fast-growing trend, but the idea of it isn’t new, and even the most advanced equipment isn’t necessarily category-defying, however cool it may be. Show me a camping trailer that will fold up and fit under my bed, or one that is affordable without taking on a mortgage, and we’d have a different story.

But no. What I sought turned out to be one of the smallest and most easily overlooked items at the show. It was an oat-based snack bar, maybe two square inches in size, and it was the most revolutionary thing I have seen in trail food in recent memory—and perhaps ever. Here I will admit that I was, indeed, hungry when I came across the One Good Thing booth, but I have since reassessed my judgment and deemed it to be sound. What’s exciting about OGT is not the product itself but the wrapper—which doesn’t exist at all.  

OGT claims to be the inventor of the world’s first wrapper-free snack bar. Unlike a traditional protein or trail bar—which comes in a (usually) plastic-based wrapper inside a cardboard box that has been shipped inside at least one or more other cardboard boxes before it reaches you—OGT bars are shipped directly to your door in a single cardboard box with no individual wrappers.

Instead, each bar is topped with an edible paper label and then dipped into a thin, translucent coating of edible beeswax. This may sound reminiscent of the thick, red wax casing of Babybel cheese, but it’s not—this coating isn’t meant to be removed. You just eat it. The same way you wipe off an apple on your shirt, or rinse off berries before you devour them, you can give the bars a quick rinse or wipe before consuming if you’ve stored them in a bag or pocket.

I’ve munched on quite a few of these bars since coming across them at the Expo. They come in 10 different flavors, and I have yet to find one I don’t like. The idea of eating wax may sound off-putting, but I was surprised at how thin it was. I’m not even sure I’d have made the connection that it was dunked in wax if I hadn’t been told.

However, I have experimented with peeling the coating off and found that it’s fairly easy to do if you so choose. I bought half a dozen bars at the show and they disappeared within just a couple of days, and I’ve since acquired more. The bars come in flavors like apple cinnamon, lemon drizzle, cherry bakewell, banoffee, and carob orange, among others, and they’re quite tasty—perhaps even addictive.

OGT launched late last year in an effort to cut down on plastic waste in food packaging. While some snack brands have debuted compostable wrappers, they have not yet been widely adopted, and the plastic ones usually aren’t recyclable. Even many of those that claim they are recyclable if brought to a participating store collection point, still end up in the landfill anyway, according to a Bloomberg investigation conducted last year. For outdoor enthusiasts and especially backpackers, a wrapper-free snack has an extra bonus: Once you’ve eaten it, your work is done. There’s nothing to put away or pack out, reducing contact with your (potentially gross) food waste trash bag.

The verdict is still out on whether OGT is a good travel snack, as I haven’t yet been able to test whether the wax coating would melt in a backpack on a warm, sunny day. And while these snacks aren’t as fragile as crisp granola bars that crumble at the mere suggestion of entering a backpack, and definitely do withstand at least some pressure, they’re soft in the middle and could be damaged under the weight of a water bottle in a backpack. I’m curious to find out how they stand up on a hike without needing to pack them in a zip-top baggie or a protective container, which of course would add either waste or weight.

As for whether it’s safe to eat food that doesn’t come in a wrapper, staff at the booth likened it to eating an apple. The brand’s CEO has also commented on this to The Grocer, a British trade news website for the food and beverage industry. “Apples in stores generally aren’t in plastic … and people will pick them up, not even give them a wash and eat them,” said CEO Kieran Stambridge. “But as soon as it’s a snack bar, they think: ‘How’s that hygienic?’”

But it’s not a problem, he added. “This is a really safe, innovative, new way of snacking.”

Right now, OGT is only available in the United Kingdom. But imagine if it catches on, and influences packaging worldwide. Airplanes alone produce millions of tons of cabin waste each year, much of which is plastic from snacks and drinks handed out mid-flight. Imagine if someday, in the not-too-distant future, your airplane snack was a wrapper-free cherry bakewell OGT bar instead of a plastic-wrapped handful of crackers. This is the kind of innovation we need to break our plastic addiction, and I’m excited to see where it takes us.

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