What makes these any better than a candy bar? Well, to be quite honest, in a lot of cases not much. You've probably seen a million ads for healthy snack bars: Nutri-this, Healthy-that. These really are just glorified candy bars.If you go in most gyms across America, you will almost always see protein bars being sold. The diet industry wants to give people what they want(high fat/salt/sugar), but make them feel like they are not really getting high fat/salt/sugar. People have been conditioned to want to appear health conscious, but if you were to look in their kitchens, you would see the ugly truth.
I used to LOVE protein bars and thought they were good for me. I vowed to stop sugar and ended up eating about 3 or 4 of these a day. I really was still just satisfying my habit, but clearing my guilty conscious. It has been about a year since my last protein bar and I am so glad that I let them go. I highly suggest avoiding bars, whether they be protein, low-carb, meal replacement, etc. as the nutritional content is for the most part not ideal.These bars are convenient but perhaps too convenient as they are high in fats (saturated) and sugars.It's much more difficult to create a great-tasting, moist, and generally high quality bar without adding a ton of sugar, corn-syrup, and/or fructose. Eat one, and your insulin levels will skyrocket for half an hour, then plummet causing even sharper hunger pains than you had a half hour before. So, it is doing the exact same thing in your body as plain ol' SUGAR!
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Are there any bars that you do recommend?
ReplyDeleteThanks Joy for talking about the myth of the healthy protein bar. I just had a conversation the other day with a friend about why she shouldn't eat protein or meal replacement bars. Her argument was, "It's better than nothing." I suggested she keep a cooler tote in her car or at work with fruit/veggie options instead. She'd be more satisfied and she wouldn't be consuming unnecessary sugar/crap. :-) shana
ReplyDeleteHi Joy. I was wondering what your thoughts are about Larabars? They are unprocessed, uncooked and made of only whole fruits, nuts and spices. I like to pack them as a snack when I can't bring a cooler for fresh produce, and they change it up from just a hanful of nuts. Do you have any feelings about these bars and if they are ok to be eating?
ReplyDeleteI knew someone would mention Larabars;). Are Larabars, that have just a few natural ingredients better than say the Power Bar that has over 10 processed ingredients? Yes However, for food combining purposes, it is not best to have larabars more than a few times/wk. Stay tuned as I mention the best, most powerful food you can snack on in between meals!
ReplyDeleteYou know I have never really liked bars. They seemed so artificial to me. So I just never got into them.
ReplyDeleteThe way I see it , if you really want to start eating and living healthy you should start looking at the ingredients that are in the package foods that we eat. This would be a good starting point.
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