The Untold Truth Of LUNA Bars

Long before Chaka Khan sang "I'm every woman," Luna was every goddess. The ancient Romans knew Luna as the moon and identified her with a series of deities. According to Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia, the moon had her own temple but was also worshipped in the form of Diana, who was a lunar goddess, divine huntress, and goddess of childbirth and as a goddess who traveled to the underworld under the assumed names Proserpina and Hecate. The Roman poet Horace Flaccus referred to Luna as "two-horned queen of the stars."

As the moon, Luna continued to symbolize women for centuries. The Conversation notes that some of the most prominent women in literary history have ascribed female attributes to the moon and written stellar poetry about her. The Greek poet Sappho said of the moon, "When, round and full, her silver face, Swims into sight, and lights all space." Emily Dickenson penned "The Moon was but a Chin of Gold" in which she describes the heavens as the moon's bonnet and the universe as "her shoe."

Those are gigantic shoes to fill. But LUNA Bars have managed to follow in the moon's footsteps in their own way. These trailblazing nutrition bars shined a light on women and helped them turn their bodies into temples fit for a lunar goddess.

Launched in 1999 by the owner and co-CEO of the Clif Bar & Company, Kit Crawford, LUNA Bars filled a long-ignored void in the women's nutrition market. As Crawford explained on the Clif Bar & Company website, "People kept asking — women kept asking — for a specific kind of bar. So we decided to make one, which no one had done before." However, not everyone greeted the idea with enthusiasm. Crawford recalled, "People said, 'you're crazy, you're going to cannibalize CLIF Bar – women don't need their own special bar'."

Strangely, even that reaction was in keeping with the LUNA Bar's association with the moon. As History observes, full moons have long been associated with insanity, giving rise to the terms "lunatic" and "lunacy." And more darkly, women have long been stereotyped as irrational and prone to hysteria. Per the journal Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health, the term "hysterectomy" is rooted in that belief and directly linked to the bogus notion that "spontaneous uterus movement" causes hysteria.

But the LUNA Bar marked the start of a very different women's movement, one that proved that Crawford was not — as so many women have been called — crazy. Female consumers were over the moon for the LUNA Bar, whose logo notably features a crescent moon. The brand would become more than a source of nutrition, striving to empower women working in the areas of sports, film, and business, among others.

On the surface, the LUNA Bar might seem like one small step for a woman named Kit Crawford, but it strives to be a giant leap for womankind. LUNA Bars have benefited different women on different levels. They're made specifically with women's nutrition in mind, and as Women's Health Magazine, a woman named Charlene Bazarian shed 100 pounds with the help of a LUNA BAR-based breakfast after trying and failing with other protein bars.

The brand also feeds female creativity through the LUNAFEST, a traveling film festival which spotlights female filmmakers. LUNA Bar creator Kit Crawford was a jazz dancer and performing artist, per Outside Online, and she used the the Vagina Monologues as her muse when looking for a way to celebrate other female artists. The proceeds from each event benefit the Breast Cancer Fund as well as local organizations geared towards women's needs.

As a proponent of giving female athletes a chance to compete professionally, the brand also formed the LUNA Pro Team, which the Clif Bar and Company website describes as "the most successful, longest-running team in the history of professional mountain bike racing." LUNA also showed its support for the US Women's Soccer Team when they sued to close the $31,250 between their bonuses and what the markedly less successful men's team earned. Rather than let litigation drag out, according to Sports Illustrated, LUNA stepped in and paid the difference in hopes of making a difference for women.