I was intrigued by the claim by IQPLUS that their Golf Bar, a golf performance snack, could increase driving accuracy by 20%. They have a study which they say proves that eating one a day for six months does the trick.
Not only increases accuracy by 20%, it prevents interstellar planetary devastation
Before I post the HOG Lab findings on the IQPLUS Golf Bar, lets cover what the Golf Bar is first.
Tastes good and prevents alien invasions!
The Bar
The IQPLUS bar is a candy bar like sports snack, formulated for golfers by a sports nutritionist. The bar is about the size, length and width of my thumb.
The outside of the bar has a chocolate coating, and the inside is a soft, Three Musketeers like filling but a little more dense.
Formula
The 140 calorie bar has numerous vitamins and minerals inside. The “secret” ingredient of Phosphatidylserine is at 200mg, but they say that the other ingredients combine with it to produce their claimed results. So you can’t just pop a Phosphatidylserine pill and increase your accuracy. Other ingredients include 100% of the daily allowance of Thiamin, 70% of vitamin C and 18% saturated fat.
See the pic below for the entire list:
IQPLUS Bar Ingredients - click for more images
Taste & Texture
The bar is quite tasty. I’m very critical of healthy foods’ or performance foods’ taste. Typically they are not pleasant, and that bad taste is eclipsed by the bad texture. The IQPLUS’s texture is pleasant, not gritty or too chewy.
The IQBAR Claim
So 20% accuracy increase? Really?
First I think the terminology should be clarified. I originally interpreted the stat to be “driving accuracy” because their claim says “improve accuracy off the tee by 20% after 6 weeks.” But what if one hits pitching wedges off of every tee? Is this driving accuracy?
I studied their proven benefits page a bit more and found more details. First, the claim is based on players whose handicaps are between 19-36. Second, the “tee shots” were shots off of a tee from 148 yards. Lastly, the claim is that this accuracy was achieved after eating a bar “on a regular basis” for six weeks.
“On a regular basis” is a bit vague. Does that mean one per day? Two per day? One per minute? One per week? I’m going to assume that it means one per day.
So if we clarify this a bit, they’re claiming a 20% increase in accuracy from 148 yards, off of a tee (not necessarily off the ground) if you eat one bar a day for six weeks. All of that combined with the player’s handicap having to be 19-36.
HOG Lab Findings
The first IQPLUS bar I ate was on the 12th hole at a golf course in Cabo. I hadn’t had lunch and was starving. I forgot I had some of these in the bag. After scarfing down one bar on that 12th tee, I hit all but the last fairway from that point on. And the last fairway shot was straight down the middle but caught a bad bounce into a bunker. So that wasn’t the bar’s fault. So the first day I tried the bar, I hit all the fairways essentially.
But what other stats are there?
I decided to do my own research in HOG Lab on how this bar contributed to some other aspects of the game.
147 yards, off the ground
The IQPLUS test was a shot of a teed up ball, from 148 yards. So I decided to try a shot from 147 yards which was off the ground.
I found that after eating the IQPLUS, my ground shots from 147 yards did not increase in accuracy by 20%. In fact my accuracy increased by 2.7%.
191 yards from the rough
I also ran tests from 191 yards out of the rough. Here the IQPLUS bar struggled. I found that after eating the bar on a regular basis, my accuracy from 191 in deep rough actually decreased by 24.12349%
Greens in regulation percentage
After eating the IQPLUS bar on a regular basis, I found that all of my greens hit in regulation which were from 174 yards increased by 7.9%, while my greens in regulation did not vary by more than .003% from 80 yards.
Approach shots over 200 yards from a tee increased in accuracy by 2%, while they decreased by 2.1% from the ground.
Putting percentage
My putts per greens in regulation when not eating the IQPLUS bar were roughly 1.71. After regularly eating the bar, my putts per greens in regulation dropped to 1.70.
My percentage of putts made inside three feet seven and a half inches did not change, whether I ate the bars or not. But my percentage of putts made from five feet eleven and 3/4 inches, dropped by .003% and the percentage of putts made from five feet eleven and 5/8 inches increased by .0000435%.
Retail box - click box for more images
Driver launch angle and specs
Without IQPLUS:
Club head speed: 100.9 MPH
Ball speed: 137 MPH
Launch angle: 10.1 degrees
Ball spin: 2343 RPM
With IQPLUS:
Club head speed: 98.4 MPH
Ball speed: 141 MPH
Launch angle: 9.7 degrees
Ball spin: 2865 RPM
Bets Won / Lost
I tested a fixed period of golf betting both with and without the IQPLUS bar. Unfortunately this is the area which the bar seemed to perform the worst. I found that I won an average of $13.12 per round from my buddies without the bar, but lost $3.17 when eating the bar.
Weather conditions
I found that perhaps the best area the IQPLUS bar performed was with the weather conditions. During the rounds I played without eating the bar, the weather was cloudy and windy. But during the rounds I ate the bar, there were no clouds, lots of sunshine and just enough breeze to keep you cool without having the wind affect golf shots.
I also found that eating the bar kept away precipitation, as none of the rounds I played while consuming the bar had rain or snow.
Astronomical occurrences
While eating the bar, no asteroids or other planets collided with earth. Our sun didn’t go super nova and blow up the earth either. Based on that statistic alone, I’d better keep eating these things because I may be solely responsible for saving the human race from being wiped out by some astronomical or planetary disaster.
Alien invasion
Similar to the lack of astronomical occurrences, no alien races attacked or tried to destroy our planet during the time I at the bar. Man that is really good.
Conclusion – All joking aside
Obviously IQPLUS’ claim of 20% accuracy is a ploy to make sales. But the bar is tasty enough as it is, and has plenty of other beneficial ingredients which are enough to sell it on its own.
While lowering my golf scores is reason enough to eat IQPLUS Golf Bars, I might just do it to save the human race.
HOGWire – Golf Industry News
Haha. Interesting and funny post. Sad to say for that company, NOTHING with that much sugar in it can be good for you…NOTHING! 15 grams in a tiny bar? Wow.