THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SNACK BARS

We emailed this out to our mailing list back in September and got a lot of requests to share it further with all of you… so without further ado, the Definitive Guide to Snack Bars for everyone to bite on!

The snack bar aisle in the grocery store is approximately a quarter mile long these days. It’s loaded from head to toe with open boxes of dozens and dozens of choices all in well designed slick packaging. The names sound sexy and intriguing and the packaging usually boasts of the ingredients and usually some number of grams that the snack contains. Just about all of them (at least the ones we’ve tried) taste pretty darned good and there is a flavor for everyone from nut flavors to birthday cake.

We have our favorite “bars” and as we head down the aisle to grab them there’s typically at least a few people standing there with glazed over eyes trying to figure out which one they should be eating to be healthy.

First things first, snack bars are a convenience food.

It’s our opinion that for optimal health and body composition, your daily food intake should be comprised of about 80% unprocessed foods while the rest can be *other* things like snack bars etc. If you’re having 3 or 4 snack bars per day on the regular, we need to take a step back and figure out how to move you to a more unprocessed food lifestyle.

Now that that’s established let's talk about the different bars that are out there and what to look for in them.

As we dig into this, keep in mind what your overall goal is.

• Are you trying to lose weight/fat?

• Are you trying to gain weight/muscle?

• Are you trying to figure out any particular digestive issue or stay away from any certain ingredients or foods?

We looked at 10 snack bars for this article.

CALORIES

If you’re trying to keep an eye on your weight (in either direction) the first thing you’ll need to look at on that slick packaging is the total calories.

Oh yeah, don’t skim over the serving size portion either. I’ve seen some snack bars and even “protein cookies” that come in 1 wrapper but under closer review they contain 2 servings!

Most of these bars come in around the 200-215 calorie range.

The Epic bar, which is similar to jerky had the fewest calories at only 120 calories while the Gatorade Whey Protein Bar had the most at a whopping 360.

Both the Clif and the Clif Builder Bars came in on the “above average” side with 250 and 280 calories respectively.

If you’re a female and are eating ~ 1600-1700 calories per day (for example), 250 calories represents a decent chunk of your daily calories.

In general we recommend getting about 80% of your daily calories from non-processed sources. So depending on which bar you choose and how many calories you eat per day that would put most people in the 1-2 snack bar per day maximum range when it comes to calories. One strategy might be to find a couple different bars that you like. One lower calorie option and one higher calorie option.

INGREDIENTS

Wow, snack bars REALLY vary when it comes to the total number of ingredients in them. When it comes to processed foods we are in the “less is better” camp. We would highly recommend this strategy to you also.

RX bars are one of our favorites for this reason. The Maple Sea Salt RX bar has only 7 ingredients (all that make sense and can be pronounced) while the Quest bar has 18 ingredients and the Pure Protein bar has 32 ingredients.

Do you know why a snack bar needs palm oil, canola oil and soy lecithin in it? Me either.

Our advice when it comes to snack bars (and everything that you eat) is to stick to the basics as much as possible.

One ingredient that we’d like to particularly warn you about are sugar alcohols.

Sugar alcohols are chemically altered sugars (carbohydrates) derived most often from plants like corn. The most common ones you will see are: Sorbitol, Xylitol, Erythritol and Maltitol. These sweeteners are used as sugar substitutes in processed foods to keep calories down while still maintaining good flavor and texture. Several of the bars we looked at for this article contained sugar alcohols with the “Think” bar having the most at 11g.

Two main things to keep in mind about sugar alcohols.

Firstly, they aren’t fully absorbed by the body. The food companies use this fact to manipulate the information on the food labels. They will take the number of grams of sugar alcohol and subtract them out of the total carbohydrates. The bad thing about that is that we don’t know exactly how many of those calories really are being absorbed. You could be eating more calories than you think when sugar alcohols are involved.

The other thing to watch with sugar alcohols is that they can cause G.I. distress in some people. Especially in the 20+g/day range. If you’re having stomach issues and are eating foods sweetened with a sugar alcohols, try eliminating them for a few days and see how you feel. Personally, we try to avoid foods and drinks with sugar alcohols.

PROTEIN

Let’s move on to protein. If you’re like us, we like to make sure that our snacks (including bars) help us reach our daily protein goals. Let’s see how the 10 bars in this article stack up.

The Quest bar nudged to the rest of the field with 21g of protein per bar while 5 other bars tied for 2nd with 20g of protein.

The Clif, RX and Epic bar had the lowest protein content, but we should mention that the Epic bar had the most protein per total calorie since it’s essentially all meat. The Gatorade Bar and the Clif Builder’s Bar were on the opposite end of the spectrum giving 20g of protein for the MOST amount of calories.

If your goal is weight GAIN, look for those higher calorie options. If your goal is weight LOSS look at the lower calorie higher protein options like the Epic and Quest Bars. The Quest Bar was one of the options with a longer ingredient list however. If you’re NOT trying to gain weight we would focus on the bars that have around 20g of protein and are in the 200 calorie range, or going with the Epic bars which are lower calorie and relatively high protein.

CARBOHYDRATES

Ok let’s talk Carbohydrates. Remember, when we eat carbs they are converted to glucose in our body and are then used for energy. Our bodies love carbs, but they can be overdone. Think about a car that you barely drive and hardly get it over 30mph around town. It doesn’t need much fuel. If you’re pretty sedentary and don’t exercise much, you probably don’t need as much fuel (carbohydrates) as an active person.

When you’re choosing a snack bar you should consider the the carbohydrate content. They vary pretty drastically.

The Clif Bar and Gatorade Bar lead the pack in carbs with a whopping 41g each. The Clif Bar in particular is a carb bomb since it has only 10g of protein to go along with all of those carbs. One of the main ingredients is oats which helps explain the high carb content. If you’re trying to LOSE weight I would steer clear of Clif Bars. In fact, in times when I’ve been trying to “bulk” on purpose, I would throw in an EXTRA Clif Bar during the day since they are relatively cheap and have so many carbs. Most bars come in around the 20g of carb mark with the exception of the Epic Bar which has 2g and the Power Crunch Bar which has 9g. If you like to have “normal” size portions of things like rice, beans, pasta and bread at your meals, we’d recommend choosing bars with less than 20g per bar. If you eat larger portions of carbs in your meals we’d recommend sticking to the lower carb snack bars like Epic and Power Crunch bars and saving those extra carbohydrates for your meals.

FAT

Moving on to another thing to consider when choosing a snack bar. Fat content. In general we keep an eye on our fat intake since fat contains over twice the calories per gram than both protein and carbohydrates.

The average fat content of the 10 bars we’re looking at was about 9g each.

The Gatorade Bar and the Power Crunch bar had the most at 13g each while the Epic and Pure Protein Bars had the lowest at 6 and 5g each. The thing about dietary fat is that it’s easy to be found hiding in many foods, sauces and dressings. So not only is it rich in calories, it’s hard to track. This is even more true if you’re dining out often. We tell you this to say that if you’re trying to keep an eye on your daily fat intake, it’s probably smart to limit the amount of fat you’re getting from your snack bars, and get most of it from the rest of your diet. We’d recommend steering clear of bars that have fat content in excess of 10g per bar.

RECAP

Let’s wrap this up with a recap. Snack bars are a convenience food. They can be a great option when on the go and will just about always beat out anything in the fast-food realm when it comes to nutrition. Use them as such. Try not to use them as meal replacements as they will never contain the full spectrum of vitamins and minerals of a well balanced meal.

Look at the ingredients of the options available to you. Do you recognize most of the ingredients? Can you pronounce them? Stick to the basics and try to get the ones with more “real” ingredients.

Watch out for the total calories, especially if you’re trying to lose weight. Snack bars should be just that, a snack. Some bars contain as many calories as a small meal. Try to stay around the 200 calorie or less mark unless you’re trying to gain weight.

Check the protein content. Most bars are in the 15-20g per bar range. If you see one with much less, it’s probably not worth it unless it’s in the 100-150 calorie range.

Watch the fat! Fat isn’t evil, but we’d rather you get most if it from your meals. If you see a bar with more than about 10g of fat it’s probably not worth it.

So which bar is right for you? It depends on your goals. For Blakley and I, the ingredients list is one of our top priorities. We don’t like putting a lot of things into our bodies that we don’t recognize, so we look for bars with simple ingredients. We also aren’t actively trying to lose or gain weight, so we want bars with average calorie content. We’ve found that having a couple options available help us stay on track. For us the winners are the RX and Epic Bars. The Epic bars are almost 100% protein and relatively low in calories (120c) so we use them when we want a high protein snack when we know it won’t be too long until we have a meal. The RX bar is higher in calories and lower in protein, but they are fairly filling and have a nice simple ingredient list. Oh yeah, they taste amazing also. Your goals and priorities might be different than ours but hopefully this article has given you some tools to analyze some of the snack bars out there to see how they can be a part of your overall diet.

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