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 50 g bar 30 G of carbs 25 G 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 cliff bar so this Cliff bar is 68 G 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 clipbar has like one more carbohydrate so this is 31 gam of carbohydrate and there's 3 G of fiber so you deduct that and you get 28 net carbs okay then we have 17 g of sugar wait a second so if we have this total carbohydrate and we deduct the fiber and the sugar we still have 11 G of carbohydrate left so what is making up this 11 G 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 starches it's just a chain of sugar molecules strung together so this really doesn't have seven g of sugar when we add the 11 G of starch sugar it really has 28 g of sugar which is 7 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 G of protein that's amazing well what's the quality of protein soy protein concentrate that is a very lowquality protein so basically we have a lot of ultra process ingredients in this product okay so that's the cliff Builder Bar now since we're talking about bars protein bars I want to mention um 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 G 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 G of carbs 5 G of fiber and 17 g of sugar now wait a second we have something that's missing in these carbs right there's 21 G of carbs that's unaccounted for so what makes up the 21 G 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 tpoon 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 chory fiber 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 up 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 dairyfree 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 G 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 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 chory 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 G and by the way this is 41% sugar in this bar right here so we have 25 G of carbs we have 12 G of fiber and N9 gram of sugar alcohols now realize if you are going to consume n 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 arral then we get almonds then palm oil then we have another ingredient called sodium quinate it says it's a high quality protein which I disagree with and then they add a type of sweetener sucros milk protein iset and whey protein iset and they also have this other ingredient poly dextrose 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 gram of protein 2 gam of sugar and let's take a look at what is in here it's like 50 g of product so we have 17 G of carbohydrate one gram of fiber but only two grams of sugar what's left starches out of all the carbohydrates 14 G 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 sucrose mtol syrup plus they add mtol it's not low on the glycemic index and they put it in a lot of sugar-free candy and it's the wor 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 gr of protein 1 gram of sugar wow that sounds pretty good there's 60 G of product in this bar and there's 25 G of carbs 8 G of fiber but 6 g of sugar alcohols that's quite high if we look at the ingredients we have this darn mol again rice flour and tapioca starch the type of protein is going to be milk protein Sway and then they add in this salable vegetable fiber ISO molto illegal saccharide 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 sucrose a lowquality artificial sugar 41% of this product is sugar but probably more because of the iso maltooligosaccharide try to say that three times now we have something called met rex 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 gram of product 30 gram of protein 17 vitamins and minerals 48 G of carbs okay 1 gam of fiber and 29 g of sugar what explains the big gap if you guessed starches you are correct it does have 4 gram of sugar alcohol 15 G of rice starch which is really equivalent to about four teaspoons of actual sugar now the sugar alcohols is the multile syrup again they're corn syrup fructose soy protein isolate they throw some way 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 gram of protein 3 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 uh seed oil but it's still highly processed then we have coconut Sugar Oat fiber and sea salt 52.73 % 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 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 the that'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 but 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 put it up right here