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Good protein/snack bar: Confused about sugar -- seems so high on the healthiest ones!
Started
by MRenee
on July 7, 2011
Hi everyone,
I'm a recovering Zone Bar/Balance Bar junkie, and I've been trying to figure out a good replacement for this bar void I'm trying to fill. I don't eat them as meals but for in-between snacks at work. I'm trying to rely on them less, but in the meantime, I'd like a better option.
Here's my confusion: Larabar seems the healthiest -- fewest ingredients, no sweetners. However, they have almost 20 grams of sugar in most cases.
Then I found today The Simply Bar -- more ingredients, added sugars (albeit agave and brown rice), and those only have around 8 grams!
My question is: What is better, fewer grams of sugar from sweetners, or double the amount of sugar from fruit.
Can someone shed some light on this for me?
Thank you so much!
Fruit has a lot of natural sugar in it. IMO, I'd much rather all natural stuff in something than something fake just for the sake of saying I had a bit less sugar. Sugar is sugar in a lot of ways but fake sugar isn't sugar.
Thanks, Tania. The thing is, the sugar in the lower-sugar bar wasn't fake, just not from fruit. It was from brown rice syrup and agave. Is that better if there's less of it, than more of it from fruit? That's what I can't figure out.
Can you find a raw bar? Here in the UK we have a brand called nakd and they do amazing raw nut and fruit bars, I am particularly addicted to their cocoa orange bar, which has saved my life at several weddings (am a photographer) because I can just scoff it quickly and they satisfy the hunger...
Hi MRenee,
Brown rice syrup is very superhero. Here's a macrobiotic snack bar that I love and uses all superhero ingredients:
http://www.gomacro.com/
I personally think Larabars are the best option since its just basically pure fruit- I think the sugar from fruit would be better than the sugar from any additive, really. There's a whole new controversy about agave now. Brown rice syrup is superhero and seems ok, but I'm sure they'll be telling us something's wrong with it next!! I just try to stick with the fewest ingredients possible.
Both are really good options ... can't go wrong with either!
Thanks MRenee, for mentioning The Simply Bar. Hope you love it as much as we do! This discussion has actually sparked a blog post on The Simply Bar's site.
In Cathy's opinion, the simple answer is: "25 g of sugar is not good for you".
But the truth is that 25 g of sugar from any source (sucrose, glucose and fructose) is broken down to glucose in the body. There is no special pathway for "dried fruit" to be broken down. 25 grams of sugars whether from honey or from dates is still 25 grams of sugars. Read the rest of the post at Are Dried Dates Good for Me?
The Simply Bar has 16 g protein, paired with 2-3g of fat, under 10 g of sugar and 160 calories or less.
Hope you enjoy the blog post - in the meantime, we'd love to offer a FREE BAR for you to try. We've created an exclusive coupon just for The Kind Life members. Just use coupon code FREEBARKINDLIFE at checkout and we'll ship it free, too! Enjoy!
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