At training camp, my homemade energy bars were mostly gone after the first ride, even the ones that had soy flour that I thought tasted a little chalky.

The next thing I started thinking about was the fact that I am using an egg in each batch. I don't know how good the shelf life is for a food item that has egg in it, even if baked. Probably not long. So I did some research and found that lecithin is often used as an emulsifier in commercial food products in lieu of egg.

Most articles proclaim lecithin to be safe and not particularly bad for you to eat. However, most lecithin is derived from soy beans and I am starting to think that soy is not the food it is cracked up to be. For one, it is an estrogen blocker**. This author states that soy lecithin is the gummy crap left over from processing soy beans and contains whatever pesticides were used to grow the beans. There are other sources of lecithin such as sunflower seeds and eggs, but apparently soy is the cheapest to produce.

Some proponents of lecithin note that it is an excellent substitution for those who don't eat eggs for whatever reason (high cholesterol, vegan). You can use it in place of egg when baking things that require an emulsifier, though lecithin is not going to provide the fluffiness that an egg white provides.

I haven't looked for powdered lecithin in non-supplemental form, so I don't know how/if it is sold for non-commercial use. In the meanwhile, I'm going to keep tweaking other ingredients (variables) in my recipe.

** I should explain this in more detail. Isoflavones in soy have been shown to possibly aid in lowering the chance of breast cancer in women because it neutralizes estrogen. However, when I overconsume soy products, my menstrual cycle goes all out of whack. I can't imagine that being a good thing.