The shocking truth about protein bars. Protein bars are a huge industry. What's in the ingredients?
Let's first start with an actual candy bar, and then we're going to do a comparison with all the healthy protein bars. Now, if we take the Snickers bar, a 50-gram bar, 30 grams of carbs, 25 grams of that is sugar. So basically, we're talking about 58% of this bar is sugar. And when you look at the first ingredient, that makes up most of this bar. And the first ingredient is milk chocolate.
The second is peanuts. And the third, corn syrup. Pretty darn high in the glycemic index.
Then we have actual sugar. And then it has salt, egg whites, palm oil, butter, skim milk, lactose, which is milk sugar, and peanuts. So that's what makes up a Snickers bar.
Now remember that as we go through these protein bars, because somehow there's a perception that these protein bars are healthier than a candy bar. The first one I want to go through is this one right here. This is a Clif Bar.
So this Clif Bar is 68 grams. Okay, so it's a little more than the candy bar. And whereas the candy bar is 58% sugar, this one is merely 41% sugar. But they have virtually the same amount of carbohydrates, except for the Clif Bar has like one more carbohydrate.
So this is 31 grams of carbohydrate. And there's three grams of fiber, so you deduct that. and you get 28 net carbs. Then we have 17 grams of sugar. Wait a second.
If we have this total carbohydrate and we deduct the fiber and the sugar, we still have 11 grams of carbohydrate left. What is making up this 11 grams of carbohydrate? It's starches. Not like the typical starches in vegetables.
The starches that turn into sugar so quick, they really are sugars because if you look at what a starch is... It's just a chain of sugar molecules strung together. So this really doesn't have 17 grams of sugar. When we add the 11 grams of starch sugar, it really has 28 grams of sugar, which is seven teaspoons of sugar.
But I want to know what type of sugar we're dealing with. Well, first one is cane syrup. Then we have brown rice syrup.
There's some palm oil for the fat. And then here are the starches. We have soy flour and rice flour.
Now, the big thing that people are going to look at when they look at the label is how much protein. Wow, 20 grams of protein. That's amazing. Well, what's the quality of protein?
Soy protein concentrate. That is a very low quality protein. So basically, we have a lot of ultra-processed ingredients in this product. Okay, so that's the Cliff Builders Bar. Now, since you're talking about bars, protein bars, I want to mention an energy bar by Cliff.
Okay, so we'll be talking about this one. Maybe you've seen it in the grocery store. This bar is 68 grams. 55.88% of it is sugar. Now, remember when I talked about sugar with this one?
This one has 58% sugars. 58%, 56%. This is 43 grams of carbs, 5 grams of fiber, and 17 grams of sugar.
Now, wait a second. We have something that's missing in these carbs, right? There's 21 grams of carbs that's unaccounted for.
So what makes up the 21 grams of carbs that they're not talking about? Starches again. When you think starches, think sugar. So basically we're talking about 5.25 teaspoons of extra sugar that's hidden as starches.
So when you consume this, you're consuming 9.5 teaspoons of sugar. And then if we look at the ingredient, we have oats, organic brown rice syrup, soy rice crisps. which is soy protein isolates and rice flour, organic tapioca syrup, organic cane syrup, and also the chicory fiber and organic soy flour and the soy oil.
So we're dealing with a lot of starches, a lot of sugars, and then some seed oil. I'm going to tell you right now, if you consume this, you're not going to have sustainable energy. You're going to have some little bit of spike in energy, and then you're going to crash and burn, and you're going to end with low blood sugars.
If you have a very fast metabolism and you're exercising, you might be able to deal with it, but I know I would not be able to deal with this bar right here. All right, now let's go to the kind bar. And it says the number one ingredient is heart-healthy peanuts. It says on the back, low glycemic index, dairy-free, no GMO, very low sodium, no sugar alcohols, zero trans fats, and a good source of fiber. Let's see if any of this is actually true.
The first thing you need to know is this is a 40 gram bar. And if we look at the percentage of sugar, it's 37.5% of it is sugar. What type of sugar? Well, if we get beyond the first ingredient, which is peanuts, the second ingredient is glucose syrup. Glucose syrup is not low on the glycemic index.
Then sugar, then honey, then palm oil, then the soy protein isolate, and they throw in the chicory root fiber. Your perception of healthy protein bars might be changing. Don't worry, it gets worse. Okay, the next one I want to talk about is the Quest bars, okay? The Quest bars.
In one of these bars, we have 60 grams. And by the way, this is 41% sugar in this bar right here. So we have 25 grams of carbs, we have 12 grams of fiber, and 9 grams of sugar alcohols.
Now realize, if you are going to consume 9 grams of sugar alcohols, you're going to have a lot of GI problems, a lot of gas, a lot of bloating, maybe some diarrhea. The first ingredient is a protein blend, then polydextrose, then water, erythritol, then we get almonds. then palm oil.
Then we have another ingredient called sodium casein. It says it's a high quality protein, which I disagree with. And then they add a type of sweetener, sucralose, milk protein isolate, and whey protein isolate.
And they also have this other ingredient, polydextrose. Again, we don't know what's going to happen when your good bacteria try to deal with it or ferment it. We don't have the long-term safety studies. So right now we're doing kind of a human experiment to find out how this affects people. And apparently you are the guinea pig.
Now let's get into this one right here called pure protein. When I say the word pure protein, what comes to mind? Pure protein, right? That means 100% of this is protein in theory, but in reality, it's not true.
It has 20 grams of protein, two grams of sugar. And let's take a look at what is in here. It's like 50 grams of product.
So we have 17 grams of carbohydrate. one gram of fiber, but only two grams of sugar. What's left?
Starches. Out of all the carbohydrates, 14 grams of that is starch. Basically, we're throwing in four more teaspoons of sugar and they're hidden as starches, so you don't notice it on the label. 34% of the pure protein is sugar.
Let's talk about the ingredients, what's in here. Sugar, we have tapioca starch, and we also have sucralose maltitol syrup, plus they add Multitol. It's not low on the glycemic index and they put it in a lot of sugar-free candy and it's the worst sugar alcohol. And of course, the type of protein that is in this pure protein product is, you guessed it, soy protein isolate.
The cheapest, worst type of protein you can consume. All right, next one we're going to talk about is this one called One. This one has 20 grams of protein, one gram of sugar.
Wow, that sounds pretty good. There's 60 grams. of product in this bar.
And there's 25 grams of carbs, 8 grams of fiber, but 6 grams of sugar alcohols. That's quite high. And if we look at the ingredients, we have this darn maltitol again, rice flour and tapioca starch.
The type of protein is going to be milk protein some way. And then they add in this soluble vegetable fiber, isomaltoalegosaccharide. It's sugar. And then canola oil, which is seed oil, polydextrose, cellulose, which is basically. sawdust or wood pulp.
And then again, the sugar that they're using is sucralose, a low quality artificial sugar. 41% of this product is sugar, but probably more because of the isomaltoligosaccharide. Try to say that three times. Now we have something called Metrex or RX.
It's a meal replacement. So this is not necessarily a protein bar, but even though it has 30 grams of protein, maybe it is a protein bar, but they advertise it as a meal. replacement. You can just take this without having to eat.
It has 100 grams of product, 30 grams of protein, 17 vitamins and minerals, 48 grams of carbs, okay? 1 gram of fiber, and 29 grams of sugar. What explains the big gap?
If you guessed starches, you are correct. It does have 4 grams of sugar alcohol, 15 grams of rice starch, which is really equivalent to about 4 teaspoons. actual sugar. Now the sugar alcohols is the maltitol syrup.
Again, they're corn syrup, fructose, soy protein isolate. They throw some whey in there, some milk, some egg whites. And this also contains something called bioengineered food ingredients. They don't want to use the word GMO anymore. This right here is 48% sugar.
Then we have this one. It's called AMRX bar. First thing it says is 10 grams of protein, three tablespoons of... oats.
Sounds healthy. Five cashews. That's healthy.
Two egg whites. Wow, that's great. Two teaspoons of honey.
Best form of sweetener. No BS. Now, let's make sure that there's nothing else in here because this gives the appearance that there are only these ingredients on here. Well, almonds, blueberries, pumpkin seeds, brown rice. Brown rice?
Why are they putting that in there? High oleic sunflower oil. What is that?
That might sound like a healthier seed oil, but it's still highly processed. Then we have coconut sugar, oat fiber, and sea salt. 52.7. 3% of this is sugar. A lot of these bars are comparable to a candy bar.
Now, if we were to compare all these bars and trying to pick out the worst one, my pick would be this one right here being the worst one. And the reason for that is not just that it's 41% sugar, which is a big problem, but there's also some hidden sugars and some things that are really going to mess up your blood sugars, things that are camouflaged as fiber. are really sugars.
So there's really nothing in here that is healthy at all. At least some of these bars have some good ingredients in them, but I couldn't really find anything in this one. So tell me what you think about these protein bars.
And if you found a bar that actually is healthy, please comment down below. I've been looking. I just haven't found any.
Now, since protein is the main theme of this video, if you have not seen this video on one of the best protein sources. You should check it out. I put it up right here.