Reviews of New Food: Hormbles Chormbles

As a longtime gym-goer, I am the target audience for all manner of protein-packed bullshit. Protein coffee? Can’t start the day without it. Protein salsa? Pass the chips. At the height of my weightlifting fixation, there were years when the friendly snake-oil salesmen at GNC got about half of my disposable income, which I happily traded for products with names like “Dr. Humongo’s Bicep Elixir.”

I am a world-class mark for the magic bean vendors of the supplement industry. Ninety-nine out of one hundred people, when presented with a bottle of mysterious powder called “Gorilla Boost MAX” that claims to “supercharge your T levels,” will simply roll their eyes and walk away. I am the hundredth person. I will buy a year’s supply. And if you can pack ten grams of extra protein into a pretzel, a vinaigrette, or a glass of orange juice? Buddy, I’m reaching for my wallet.

Over the years, I’ve sampled countless protein-dense items trying to pass themselves off as food for humans. The Quest Bar, for example, is an alien creation with a chalky-yet-chewy texture that occurs nowhere in nature, and a uniquely chemical taste I can only describe as carcinogenic. If you sprinkled some protein on asbestos insulation, you’d be halfway to a Quest Bar.

This is just to establish that I’m no stranger to protein-based novelty foods. It’s from a place of experience, then, that I denounce Hormbles Chormbles, a product I strongly suspect to be both AI-generated and 3D-printed. This is food by robots, for robots.

Most of the protein grub I’ve tried sucks pretty bad. The Quest Bar is an ultra-processed insult to the very concept of food that no animal besides humans would consider eating. But no product has hurt me spiritually the way I feel hurt by Hormbles Chormbles.

When you hear the words “Hormbles Chormbles,” what do you imagine? My first reaction was amusement: I said the name aloud and snorted. Surely a food item called a “Chormble” must be a delightful, Wonka-esque treat.

Whatever you’re picturing, I come bearing disappointment: a Hormbles Chormble is a protein bar. A sugar-free, low-calorie protein bar in the genre of “better-for-you candy.”

You may know of this trend thanks to brands like Smart Sweets and Unreal. These are companies that figured out how to make candy taste worse and cost more. From gummy bears that taste like pencil erasers to peanut butter cups that taste like sand, their output occupies a barren middle ground between food that’s actually healthy and food that’s actually delicious. The Chormble hails from that same wasteland, with the Spartan nutrition facts to prove it: 10g protein, 150 calories. It’s food stripped of all things inessential, such as pleasure.

The bar’s wrapper is yellow with black letters: the stark, industrial packaging you’d expect for a bomb shelter ration, or a snack on an episode of Black Mirror labeled “NUTRIENT BLOCK.” A Hormbles Chormble, like a bottle of Soylent, is food for the end of the world.

The Chormble itself is unremarkable: it looks like a Hershey’s bar, and tastes like a piece of plastic being haunted by the ghost of one. The thin bar’s miserly hint of sweetness comes from monk fruit, which, for about one second, tricks your palate into mistaking it for candy. But the burnt and bitter truth can’t hide for long.

Marketing copy on the Hormbles Chormbles website claims “you literally would never know it has zero sugar,” and boasts of “No weird fake sugar aftertaste.”

Let it be known that these people are lying. Half an hour after consuming a Chormble, your mouth will still taste like you just ate a bar of chocolate-flavored Chapstick.

“Hormble” and “Chormble” also approximate the sounds my digestive system made a few minutes after eating one. My stomach, confused and betrayed, strained in distress against the durable shards of the Chormble. I assume it was eventually digested and passed through my body, but I couldn’t say for sure.

Hormbles Chormbles left me feeling not just queasy, but deceived. There’s something fraudulent about giving such a playful name to such a joyless, utilitarian product. It feels like a mean joke.

While researching all things Chormble, I found an interview with the CEO of the company, who had this to say about his grim creation:

“Candy never really made sense to me,” said Jared Smith, Hormbles Chormbles Founder and CEO. "… I had a cognitive dissonance with nutrition. I understood its importance, but I still craved candy.”

I’m sorry, but these are the words of an android. “Jared Smith” is not a convincing human name, and “Candy never really made sense to me” is not a convincing human sentence. Turing Test: Failed.

Ultimately, I’ve come to understand Hormbles as the solid-food equivalent of Soylent, in the burgeoning category of “technofascist protein slop.” When Sam Altman has all of us living in shipping containers, running on hamster wheels ten hours a day to power his data centers, a Chormble will be the reward for the fastest among us.

All of that said, it’s not an entirely bad product. If you can get past the high price, mediocre taste, and deep spiritual degradation of eating a Hormbles Chormble, I have to concede that the macros are pretty good.