When it comes to energy bars, I think less is more, in my opinion. Eat a regular Power Bar, for example, and you’ll be ingesting evaporated cane juice syrup, corn syrup, maltitol syrup, and lots of other sugary syrupy stuff along with a bunch more ingredients you won’t recognize or be able to pronounce.
That’s why I tend to go for the bars with just a handful of organic ingredients. With these, I know the exact healthy ingredients that are going into my body. And IMHO, these simple bars just taste better too. They’re not so candy bar sweet, and they don’t have that weird synthetic taste. Here are my three favorite food bars:
Raw Revolution. Green with Music included one of these bars in its shwag bags — and I loved mine. These organic live food bars come in 8 flavors that are sweetened with agave nectar, not sugar, making them tasty without being too sweet.
Though I’m not a big fan of spirulina, I loved the Spirulina & Cashew bar, which is made with just 6 ingredients: cashew, dates, agave nectar, almonds, spirulina, and sprouted flax.
Lara Bar. These raw, unprocesed bars are probably my favorite brand of bars — some of which are organic. Each bar — ranging in flavors from Key Lime Pie to Cocoa Mole — contains a serving of fruit. In fact, the fruit ingredients pretty much provide all the natural sweetness for these yummy bars.
Lara Bar also uses fair trade cocoa for its chocolate-flavored bars — including its line of all-organic Jocalat bars, which have the same healthy goodness of Lara bars, but with more fair trade chocolatey emphasis.
Clif Nectar bars. I don’t like all Clif bars since they seem to pack more soy protein than I can handle — though Clif bars, in general, seem to be a good substitute for the less eco Power Bars. But I do love the newish Clif Nectar bars.
All 4 flavors of this Nectar line are made with 5 or fewer ingredients, and each bar contains 2 servings of fruit! Pick from Cherry Pomegranate, Dark Chocolate Walnut, Cranberry Apricot Almond, and Lemon Vanilla Cashew.
Have another tasty simple bar to recommend? Share your favorites in the comments.
Images via rawrev.com, larabar.com, clifbar.com
All the bars I’ve picked up from the Organic Food Bar brand (http://www.organicfoodbar.com/) have been pretty good, although I don’t know if they would be considered “simple”. Honestly though, I prefer just to make up these sorts of snacks on my own. It’s especially easy to make homemade larabars (just read their ingredient list!) Looking at the Raw Revolution bars, they would probably be pretty easy to whip up at home as well.
Comment by M — February 24, 2009 @ 2:26 pm
M – when i make homemade lara bars they’re too gooey
Siel – are larabars organic? I thought they were not unless specified
Comment by meghan — February 24, 2009 @ 4:34 pm
meghan — You’re right re: the Lara bars! I thought they were all organic, but from the website, it seems that they’re only organic some of the time. Jocalat bars, however, are always organic. Will update the post –
Comment by Siel — February 24, 2009 @ 4:39 pm
Love the Clif Nectar bars (not only are they tasty, they’re the right size for me). I’ve tried Larabars and haven’t cared for them, but that’s why there’s more than one product in the world.
Comment by KateNonymous — February 24, 2009 @ 4:46 pm
I really like Luna Bars. Not sure about the origin of the ingredients, but I like that they’re all vegan (the regular bars at least). They’re made by Clif bar, too. They’ve discontinued my favorite flavor, Key Lime Pie, but I love the Chai Tea. The berry flavor in the berry-almond bar is really intense, in a good way. I think there are 15 or so flavors. Most stores only have a few, but most Whole Foods carry them all. I also buy them by the box on amazon. They are made with soy, though. I’ve never had a Clif bar, so I’m not sure if they’re similar.
Comment by Meredith — February 24, 2009 @ 4:52 pm
Meredith
I think i would read the ingredients on Luna Bars. Not all Clif bar products are vegan. I vaguely remember encountering a Luna bar that was not vegan. Maybe the dulce de leche? But there are other Clif and Luna products that are for sure not vegan
Comment by meghan — February 24, 2009 @ 5:17 pm
Out of the ones you’ve shown here I have to admit I’ve only tried the Clif bar, which I found alright. I’d like to try the Raw Revolution one though.
I’ve never tried the Lärabar for the simple reason that the name annoys me. Ä and A are not pronounced the same. And it is not an A with fancy spots on top of it, it’s a separate letter. It annoys me how American companies stick them on their logos without thinking about how it changes the pronunciation.
Comment by Tilde — February 24, 2009 @ 8:52 pm
I love lara bars, and i really wish they would make them 100% organic since they are actually gluten free and i can eat them!
Comment by Leslie @ the oko box — February 25, 2009 @ 5:26 am
I’ve tried lots and lots of bars and most of them aren’t so simple. I like Clif Nectar and Larabar (again, wish they were organic) for their simplicity. Bora Bora is a really simple bar too, and very different than these sort of ‘blended’ bars. They’ve got lots of whole nuts and fruits. For a more blended bar that still tastes really fresh and whole, I like Love Force – pricier, but worth it.
Comment by rachel — February 25, 2009 @ 7:49 am
Plain old milk chocolate is what I prefer. I’ll take Fair Trade Organic when I can. I was working for a coffee roaster (JustUsCoffee) when they expanded into chocolate. When I was introduced to the guy who was going to manage the ‘Chocolate Factory’, I cautioned him that it wasn’t going to be like the movie. That was back when Depp’s reprise of the Willy Wonka thing was in theaters. The future chocolate maker argued that it would be ‘just like the movie’ and pretended to think that I had been referring to Chocolat. It’s kinda weird that Johnny Depp is in both of those movies. I think the JustUs operation ended up being somewhere between those two extremes ;)
Comment by Martin — February 25, 2009 @ 11:36 am