Protein Bars

Protein bars are a delicious and convenient way of getting a good dose of very bad protein plus all the mysteriously textured, flavoured, colourised and perservatised toxins a healthy diet avoids. Unfortunately, many people are fooled by the very clever nutritional panels that present protein bars as a source of quality nutrition.

Really, I shouldnt even have to blog about how bad these bars are. And nobody should be surprised to hear that whenever any of our clients have substituted quality nutrition in their diets for the exact same nutrition from a protein bar, the diet immediately stopped yielding fat loss or muscle gain results.

You'd think that "Snickers bar" appearance would tip most people off that protein bars CAN'T be good dieting tools? If not, then surely the mysterious dry but slimy texture these bars leave on the roof of your mouth might suggest that something is amiss? No? How about reading beyond the nutritional panel to discover that 'Soy Protein' is the first listed ingredient in the 'Proprietary Protein Blend' section with 'hydrogenated' stuff almost invariably listed somewhere in the middle of the misleading label? Or maybe you'd think people would notice that the 'chocolate coating' is, in fact, the same basic, garbage chocolate you find in the nastiest chocolate bars in the supermarket? The nuts in protein bars are always peanuts which no serious dieting person ever chooses. Even worse, the 'peanuts' are often listed in the 'protein blend' as a source of protein!

Then there are the 'sugar alcohols' which are listed as "non-impact carbs" because the body... can't use them like carbs. Quite honestly, I cannot find an intelligent explanation of how sugar-alcohols are metabolised or what mess they make on their way through your body? It appears that nobody really knows. You'd have thought people would ask: "if they aren't like carbs then what does the body do with them then"? But it seems nobody asks obvious questions anymore. Nobody asked about the Gaussian copula function; they just swallowed it whole and next thing you know we had the greatest financial crisis in over 70 years!

In recent years, protein bars have come to resemble some of the most amazing chocolate indulgences imaginable while their nutritional profile still resembles something that you might think belongs in a quality diet. But like so many things these days, the headline specifications belie the garbage you are actually buying. Protein bars are to food what those fake chinese iPhones are to the Apple iPhone. They look the same, the memory is the same, the screen is the same size; but every element of the functionality is awful to the point of being unusable!

The fact is, protein bars are something you HOPE you can GET AWAY WITH. No matter how limited your dietary knowledge, you KNOW you would never design a diet of sugar-alcohol, hydrogenated oil, chocolate and soy protein to create a lean, healthy, athletic physique. But that IS the nutrition a protein bar is providing and that is the reason it absolutely should not make up a part of anybodies diet!

Protein bars are no better for you than any other junk chocolate bar from the supermarket. In fact, a properly made chocolate bar based predominantly on cacao would be much, MUCH better for your health and physique than any protein bar you will find in a supplement store!