Picture this: you wake up late, again. You now have 15 minutes to get ready for work. As you are trying to make your hair look less like mad scientist’s and more like a professional business woman’s, you realize you are starving. What luck! You have that handy box of granola bars. And you’re being super healthy by eating one, right? WRONG!
Granola is a super healthy snack, when done right. It consists of rolled dried oats, and is usually accompanied by fruit, nuts, and the dreaded sugar. This is where we run into a problem with the granola bars, the “healthy” quick breakfast. Most granola bars advertise themselves on the front of the box as being “surprisingly nutritious,” like these KUDOS bars. I’m sure one of these would satisfy your stomach’s craving of sustenence while on the train to work, however, it is loaded with sugar. If you click on the “click for nurtional info” link, you will see that the second most common ingredient in the Chocolate Chip KUDOS bar is sugar! Bad! 11 grams! (Um, duh, it was basically drowned in a vat of chocolate.)
Also, KUDOS is from the Mars Company, of Mars bars fame, and are the lovely people who gave us M&Ms. Obviously those guys love sugar.
Over at Good Health Supplement, the CEO writes about how granola bar manufacturers put small amounts of loads of different types of sugar in their products:
“Here are some of the many “disguises” of sugar: honey, dextrose, fructose, corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, sorbitol, fruit juice concentrate, galactose, lactose, polydextrose, mannitol, sorbitol, xylitol, malodextrin and turbinado sugar.”
So keep a look out for these baddies on your next shopping trip. Also, companies like Cascadian Farm market their product with the promise of organic and a picture of a rolling, green field, synonomous with health (??).
In a Q&A at Shapefit.com, readers are instructed to only buy bars who have less that 5 grams of sugar per bar.
As is the world of health foods, granola is most beneficial if bought alone at the grocery store, and not in bar form. BearNaked has popular options. It obviously is not going to taste as good as the Quaker Oats Chewy Brand. You can spice things up by adding nuts, sliced pieces of apple and/or berries. (This option is a bit problematic if you are in my allergic-to-everything situation–to be explained in a later post.)
A quick rundown (per bar):
- Cascadian Farms Chewy Chocolate Chip: 12g Sugar.
- Quaker Oat Chewy Chocolate Chip: 7g Sugar
- Nature Valley Apple Crisp: 12g Sugar
I was surprised to see how non-sugary Quaker Oats Bars were…I’ve always been told it is like eating candy.
Futher reading: Real Simple’s “Best Granola Bars” (Disclaimer: they don’t compare sugar content)
