RBar

The nutrition bar market is crowded. After watching Fed Up (watch it!) and reading It Starts With Food (read it!), I am always checking ingredients to make sure the products I love most in the world are made with wholly good stuff. Sadly, lots of the products I’m in love with are not. i.e. alkalized cocoa es no bueno, but it tastes muy bueno.

Last year I worked for a company selling PR Bars. I no longer do, but while working with a nutrition bar company, I received an ingredient education. Most of my life, I assumed if a product was advertised as a nutrition bar, they would take the meaning of that adjective seriously. When we want a convenient, non-spoiling protein, sometimes the list of ingredients swells (promising that your muscles will too). These are the ingredients in a double chocolate PR Bar:

That’s a long list of unnatural-sounding ingredients. PR Bars have been around for a long time…like since the birth of Power Bars. So in their defense, we the people of the nutrition bar market have become far more educated on nutrition in the past 20 years. Advances have been made to debunk once thought to be advances in ingredients. Based on my own body chemistry, I know I feel better after ingesting protein in the form of deli meat than a whey alternative. (side story: Matt has a giant tub of Whey powder. I once had a dream that he was trying to fit it in a suitcase and I said, “That’s whey too big.” I woke up very proud of my in-dream pun).

All told, I love the grab and go convenience of a bar. So, in a pinch, I will grab a bar over the handful of meat.

RBar (not PR Bar) is a Tucson start-up producing maybe the most natural bar on the market. They are sold in Whole Foods stores throughout Arizona and online (free shipping!). Matt and I had the opportunity to tour the kitchen and meet the people behind the bars last week. Great people, great product. We Grevers are becoming more nutritionally conscientious each year and these bars impressed us. Check out this rock solid list of ingredients in a PB&J RBar:

Simply delicious. I suppose we could mash this stuff up in our own kitchen, but I know I won’t. RBars offer convenient good fat with no questionable ingredients. Also a big selling point for us is how easy they are on the gut. It’s tough to swim/run/lift/be active with a brick of a bar in your belly. These things break down into energy before your first flip turn. Probably a big reason they settle well is their exclusion of anything dairy. RBar will be manufacturing a protein bar made with whey soon, but I assume they will not use enough to whey you down (pun always intended).

Does it sound like I’m pitching these hard? Well, I am. It’s great to have a nutrition bar that is, in fact, nutritious.