Unless xanthan gum and sodium alginate make your mouth water, today's deal delivers you from tasteless bars of dubious nutritional value to tasty bars of definite nutritional value with You Bar: $12 gets you $25 worth of custom nutrition bars, shakes, trail mixes, cookies, and cereals. Creations from You Bar can be ideal gifts for those with food allergies or picky eaters looking to invigorate their PB&J routines. This Groupon does not include shipping.

The flavors that go into the average nutrition bar range from gritty peanut butter to gelatinous berry to brown. When you build your own bar, shake, or trail mix, you make the choices, guaranteeing taste-bud-pleasing combos and the nutrients needed to stem your nightly reversion into lycanthropy. You Bar's easy step-by-step process gives you tips and info about what each ingredient offers and for whom it's best suited, recommends ingredient combos for flavor and texture, and gives you ingredient-by-ingredient updates on nutritional value, including which herbs will continue to hold your human shape and quell your thirst for cerebrospinal fluid.

For a bar, start by choosing one or two bases (cashew butter, fat-free organic dates, organic peanut butter, and more), pick your protein of choice (whey, soy, or rice), your favorite nuts and seeds (almonds, hempseeds, pecans, and more), dried fruits (goji berries, cherries, sweetened blueberries, and more), sweeteners (agave nectar, brown rice syrup, or clover honey), seasonings (carob powder, cinnamon, chocolate chips, and more), grains and cereals, and infusions (vitamins, spirulina, fiber, or stevia). Bars come in three sizes and are packaged in boxes of 13 ($37.57 for small, $38.87 for medium, $41.47 for large), as are trail mixes ($24.57, $25.87, $28.47) and shakes ($37.57, $38.87, $41.47).

To build your own cookie, begin by picking the type of base, flour, and eggs. You then have the option of adding sweeteners and butters, as well as organic fruits, chocolate chips, nuts, seeds, and so much more. In all there are 19 customizable steps, each with a dizzying number of options. It would take approximately three years to explain all possible combinations, so check out the site for all exhaustive customizations. Your perfect batch of cookies will cost $39.99 for a 12-cookie tin. Custom cereal boxes start at $24.57 and include a customizable array of crunchy organic wheat, bran, and oat options.

Once you've designed your custom creation, you'll be asked to name it so each bar, shake, or mix will bear the title you give it on professionally printed labels. Stuff your runner significant other's holiday stocking full of custom bars bearing an inside joke, mark your nutrition territory to deter coworkers from swiping them and building edible suspension bridges spanning cubicles, or just give yourself an ego boost with a bar named Dave's Hyperpunch Energy Snax and Also Jennifer From Accounting Totally Likes Me. If customizing your nutrition is overwhelming, check out You Bar's popular recipe bars, shakes, and mixes (all $32.37 per box), or cookies ($39.99 per tin), and cereals ($19.37 per box).

Reviews

Celebrities love You Bar, and so do the Today Show and ABC News 7. You Bars' custom nutrition bars are featured in the New York Times, Time Out Chicago, Runners World, Time Out New York, More, Health, Women's Health, and elsewhere. Reviewers on Bars Are Food and The Dirty tShirt rave about the easy-to-use website and tasty creations:

• Because you dictate what goes in, the service is perfect for vegans or people with food allergies who normally have to inspect labels with a magnifying glass. – Women's Health
• Overall, we liked the YouBar process from start to finish — and the bars themselves are quite impressive as well. These guys are definitely the kings of the “build your own bar” market! – Bars Are Food