Are Energy, Nutrition, Health, or Protein Bars Really Good for You?

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One of the most common dietary supplements these days is the simple snack bar. These are a favorite for getting quick energy boosts and protein intake. But if you dig past the marketing, you’ll find that not all snack bars that call themselves healthy actually live up to their claims. Before assuming that something is good for you just because it looks like it has granola, nuts, or fruit in it, take a second to really explore the ingredients.

Energy and protein bars provide three basic things: protein, fat, and carbs (or carbohydrates). Energy and protein bars almost unavoidably have a significant amount of carbs. In fact, if eaten as a snack rather than a meal, it can very often result in too many carbs daily for people who don’t lead particularly active lifestyles. This causes most energy and protein bars to actually fatten people up when they’re trying to lose weight! Remember, just because it’s good for a pro athlete doesn’t mean it’s what your body needs. Different bodies require different diets to fit their lifestyles. A very popular additive to these bars is fiber, which allows for an increase in the size of the bar without added too many more carbs. This helps make the product feel more satisfying and allows it to be sold at a higher price, but adds relatively little nutritional benefit unless you’re low on fiber in your diet to start with.

Furthermore, many bars will attempt to improve their taste by adding in less healthy ingredients, or by heavily processing natural ingredients until they lack all their original nutrients. Yet these will likely be marketed in the exact same fashion as genuinely healthy snack bars. The only way to tell for sure is to squint and read the ingredient label, all that tiny text they’re trying to hide from you. Be on the lookout for long lists of ingredients, as a good healthy bar only needs a few simple things in it. The more stuff they cram in there, the less likely it is the end result is good for your body. You may be shocked to find that even well-known ‘healthy’ brands can try to sneak things like corn syrup and sugar by you in their snack bars! You should also watch out for bars that market themselves as being healthy imitations of traditionally unhealthy foods, like chocolate and peanut butter. Food manufacturers can’t work miracles, they can’t magically turn an unhealthy food type into a healthy one. If it tastes just like the real thing, it’s probably as bad for you as the real thing, too.

By concentrating on simple products with minimally-processed additions like dried fruit, nuts, and whole grains, you can find the snack bars that actually do what they say they do. And if you can’t find any genuinely healthy brands nearby, you can always try making your own. It’s not necessarily as hard as you’d think, and that way, you can customize your snacks to have exactly what you want and need in them. It’s certainly a lot better than buying blindly, trusting in a brand name!

Source: This article is contributed by The Fat Loss Factor

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