Lots of good advice in the thread so far, everyone, thanks.

Some of the discussion here is getting off on a tangents about dieting and "zone" that isn't directly to my specific question, but that's OK. It's all good information

For reference, I've managed to go gradually from about 215+ pounds down to my current weight of 170 simply by changing my eating habits and doing a little light exercise. It took 2.5 years, though. So I'm not looking at this as any kind of a crash diet, I've simply changed the way I eat and plan to stay with it.

At the current time, what I'm trying to do is simply satisfy my middle-of-the-day snack cravings without eating a lot of garbage full of carbs and fat. For the last couple of years, I've done my best to simply live with the cravings and not give into them. Now that I'm close to my target weight, I'm beginning to get back into the idea that I don't necessarily need to go hungry any more.

Here's my experience with protein bars, from last night:

After reading what was said about protein bars in this thread, I looked for some while grocery shopping. They had and entire section of them, with many different brands and flavors.

I found that most of the bars said "high protein" on the label, but when you looked at the fine print, they would be something like 10-15 grams of protein, 30-40 grams of carbs, and 20-30 grams of fat. Not what I was looking for. And, IMHO, falsely labeled. If it's a protein bar, why so much fat and carbs? They should say "some protein", not "high protein".

I found one brand of bar labeled "Low Carb Diet" that looked good, and bought a few. 3 grams of carbs, 20 grams of protein, 10 grams of fat, no sugars. Decent ratio, although the fat is still higher than I'd like. Tasted decent, not the greatest, but enough to satisfy my cravings for a snack. But they're $2.50 a pop. Ouch!