No, seriously.
What’s the weirdest energy snack you’ve ever had? A protein cookie? That goo that tastes like melted gummy bears? Well, what if I told you Clif Bar once made an energy puree that tasted like pizza? Yes, this was a real product. A squeezable, savory, tomato and basil flavored pouch that you were supposed to gulp down mid-run, mid-climb, or mid-regret.
In this video, we’re digging into the surprisingly real, extremely brief life of Clif’s Pizza Margherita energy food and what it says about flavor, fitness, and the limits of innovation.
By the early 2010s, Clif Bar had become a powerhouse in the endurance snack market.
Their bars were beloved by cyclists, climbers, hikers, and weekend warriors. But the company wanted to branch out from solid bars into performance-focused, real-time fuel. Something that could be eaten on the move like energy gels but made from actual food. Real food.
So in 2013, Clif launched a new line called Clif Organic Energy Food. These were resealable pouches of pureed ingredients, not quite like baby food, but also not quite like soup, but they were drinkable.
The idea was to offer endurance athletes a savory whole-food alternative to sugary gels. And to their credit, the concept made sense. On longer runs or rides, people often crave salt, not sugar.
So what flavors did Clif choose to kick this off?
There was banana beet with ginger, sweet potato with sea salt, and then of course, pizza margherita. The pouch contained organic ingredients like tomato puree, quinoa, olive oil, basil, garlic, and sea salt. Clif described it as delivering, “real food energy for endurance athletes.”
Meant to be eaten during long-duration workouts where solid food might be hard to digest, it had the texture of thick soup, the scent of a microwave pizza, and a taste that reviewers politely called “surprising.”
One user on a cycling forum wrote, “It tasted like someone blended a hot pocket and dared me to drink it.”
Others said it was better than expected, but still weird to squeeze a lukewarm tomato, garlic, and slurry into your mouth during a race.
So what made Clif think this was a good idea? The idea of savory sports nutrition wasn’t entirely new.
Athletes doing ultra-distance events, think Iron Man races or 100-mile races, often deal with flavor fatigue. You can only take so many berry blast gels before your body rebels.
Savory foods like broth, potatoes, and rice balls are commonly used by pro runners and cyclists.
Clif was just trying to package that trend in a convenient, portable way. The pizza puree offered carbs, fat, and sodium, the trinity for endurance fueling. Technically, this is pretty solid, but practically, it turns out people weren’t quite ready to shotgun lukewarm tomato puree at mile 22.
Reactions were mixed, and by mixed, mostly confused.
While some endurance athletes got it, the general public had a hard time wrapping their heads or stomachs around the idea of liquid pizza for workouts. Even within athletic communities, reviews were cautious.
Comments like, “I wanted to like it, I understood it, but halfway through, I started gagging.” were not uncommon.
Another quotation, “I ate it once during a marathon. My friends never let me forget it.” End quote.
And while we shouldn’t let peer pressure determine how we fuel our bodies, I think it really does underscore how new the idea was for some athletes. The flavor became a kind of punchline, a bizarre but sincere attempt at real food fueling that most people tried once and then abandoned.
So why does this weird little experiment matter?
Because it shows something important. Clif wasn’t just trying to be quirky. They were tackling a real problem in sports nutrition.
That is, how to fuel endurance athletes with whole food in motion without relying on sugar slush.
And honestly, that’s pretty admirable.
The pizza margherita pouch may not have caught on, but it opened up the conversation around savory energy, flavor fatigue, and real food fueling. It’s a conversation that’s still going.
Today, brands like Spring Energy and Mirror Energy offer plant-based whole food purees with creative flavors. Some sweet, some savory.
Clif helped lay that groundwork. They just picked a pretty intense starting flavor.
So next time you’re hitting the trail or lining up for a race and someone pulls out a banana or gel, just remember, it could be worse. It could be pizza in a pouch.
Would you try pizza margherita energy food? And if you did, what did you think?
Until next time, keep your snacks salty and maybe, just maybe, leave the pizza for the finish line.