Good Lifestyle

When you search for a quick and portable snack with delicate ingredients like peanuts, caramel andChocolate, a clif bar is what satisfies all your needs. It sounds like agood snack, law? Instead of buying a candy bar, you opt for a dark chocolate almond bar with rolled oats, nine grams of protein, healthy almonds for the heart and other biological ingredients. Watch you, make healthy choices!

The only problem is that your beloved clive bar bar is, unfortunately, nowhere so healthy as you think. In fact, nutritionists do not recommend 5 bar flavors CLIF on 50. We explain why.

Is CLIF bar healthy?

"I think of clift bars like dessert because they are raised in carbohydrates and sugar," saysThurlow Cynthia, a nurse practitioner specialized in nutrition.

How high? Let's go back to this black chocolate almond bar, you took off the shelf. Return it for nutritional information and you will see that the very first ingredient is organic brown rice syrup. Organic or not, it's a sugar and simple. It also lists cane syrup and cane sugar, sending the total amount ofadded sugar In this bar, a mountain bar up to 21 grams.

Meanwhile, carbohydrates enter a 43 grams of 43 grams per bar, with the entire bar of the 260 calorie bar. (These nine grams of protein do not seem so big are they?) It's a kind of problem with the whole line CLIF: there are good things inside this promising packaging, but too often the bad We sometimes take through a landslide.

Are there benefits to eat clif bars?

Want the truth hard cold? Not really. No, not even for athletes (we get you shouting from yourpost-training needs) Although athletes enjoy rich protein, sugar and calorie snacks, no one needs the amount of sugar found in most CLIF bars. And this especially true when there are better choices with whole food ingredients that can feed your energy levels without sending yourself in a sugar coma.

"I would prefer that athletes have a piece of low glycemic fruits like berries or a threaded apple and a piece ofjerk beef Compared to a bar like this, "says Thurlow.

Barbie balls, rdn,Barbie Balls Longgevity Nutrition, Inc., Still stronger on the clif bars, calling them "snickers with a health halo". (For reference, aSnickers bar A comparable nutrition information: four grams of protein, 27 grams of sugar, 250 calories and 33 grams of carbohydrates. Which comes out at a little less protein than a black chocolate almond clive bar and a little more sugar; However, it also contains fewer carbohydrates and fewer calories.)

"The only difference between CLIF and CANDY is the added protein isolates, which have doubtful advantages compared to entire food sources of protein [like beans oreggs], says balls.

Which ingredients do you need to look at the clif bars?

Protein isolates are essentiallyTreated forms of proteins (AsWhey protein powders) that are usually easy to digest and provide protein without calories. But there are concerns about how they are beneficial. According toHarvard Health, their safety as a dietary supplement has not been widely studied. In addition, some of these powders have the potential to contain toxins and contaminants, according to theClean label project.

Point? It might be better that you can indulge in a candy bar from time to time, recognizing it as a treat, instead of nose every day clif bars while thinking you make a healthy choice.

How to buy clif bars

Always committed to Clifer? The bars may not be thebest healthy snack option but they could be ahealthier dessert than a slice of cake. No matter how you plan to eat them, know that some CLIF bar flavors are much better for you than others.

• Watch the added sugar.The balls indicate that CLIF bars contain an average of 25 grams per bar and in many varieties, the very first ingredient is the sugar. It recommends choosing bars with less than four grams of sugar. The problem? There are not many bars that answer this norm.
• Check soy's products. Whether listed as an isolate of soy protein, roasted soy, soy flour or seed oils, or soy lecithin, says Thurlow to avoid it. The health benefits (or dangers) of soy are constantly beingstudied and questioned. The by-products of soybean as protein and lecithin isolates are generally cheap ingredients and poor quality.
• Remember your daily values.It's not just that 25 grams of sugar per bar are a lot, 25 grams are basically everything you should eat in a day. "The recommended daily limit for women and children is 24 grams of added sugar, according to the American Heart Association," says Diéige-Certified Pincidance Lauren Harris-Pincus, founder ofNutritionarringyou.com and author ofThe packed breakfast club on the protein.

The 5 best clive bars

There are about 50 different varieties of CLIF bar, but nutritionists recommend only these five flavors. They are relatively low sugar and have cleaner ingredients. In this way, the number of high proteins that is the point of sale of Clif's signature can actually benefit you (rather than being drowned in a brown rice syrup sea).

1. CLIF BAR ALL THE ROPATE CAURUT CHOCOLATE ALL TENTA

The entire Lotta line CLIF bars gets the highest seal of nutritional approval of all CLIF varieties. The ingredients are nearly 100% of whole foods, so you can read the label and recognize the things you eat. And although it's alwayssugarThis is not the kind of sugar you need to emphasize (that is, added or artificial).

"All the sugar [in all the bars of Lotta] comes from the fruit," says Harris-Pincus, adding that the roast peanut chocolate bar also has four grams of nuts and seeds, as well as 10 grams of grams ofPlant-based proteins.

2. CLIF Bar Fruit Smoothie Filled Tart Tart Berry

Do you have to drink asmoothie Or eat a snack bar? With the CLIF bar filled with fruit, you do not have to choose. Although the list of ingredients here is longer than all the bars of Lotta, Thurlow says it does not contain soy and maintains its sugars added to a minimum (11 grams total, eight of them added). It also lists oatmeal, a mixture of nuts and buttered oats and rolled oats on the label before moving to brown rice syrup, unlike many traditional CLIF bar counterparts.

3. Clif Bar Protein Protein Chococat Almond de Noyance

"If you are looking for more than oneprotein barIt is your best bet, "says Harris-Pincus, which exposes its nutritional benefits, including 14 grams of protein (the equivalent of more than two eggs), five grams of fiber and only three grams of added sugar. It is A solid choice if you are a medium snacker, but even better if you are an athlete who needs to refuel.

4. Clif Bar Touble Lotta Gindge d'Almond

If roasted peanuts and chocolate are not your thing, ginger at the spicy almonde throughout the Lotta bar is a solid alternative. It is conditioned pumpkin seeds and sesame, cashew butter, coconut oil and a punch of hot and delicious spices. Once again, there are 17 grams of sugar, but everything is from date dough, no syrups.

5. Peanut butter filled with bar nuts

APeanut Butter Stuffed bar waiting - Expect - more peanut butter? If you wonder how it did it on the "best" list, turn it back and check the ingredients. In addition to seven grams of protein, Thurlow emphasizes that he has no soy. It is alsolow carbohydrates And the sugar. Better still, it has integer ingredients (peanut butter, oatmeal and rolled oats) like its first three ingredients.

The 3 worst clif bars

For a brand of snack-bars generally not recommended by the experts of nutrition, it is surprising that all of them can really be called the worst. In a way, however, nutritionists called the following three options specifically.

"Each of these contains soy and too many carbohydrates. They also have a high sugar content close to daily recommendations," says Thurlow. "Head of everything, [and rings] the lower sugar, soy sugar options."

1. Caramel cloth with sea salt

If it looks like a $ 6 Starbucks coffee, you probably should not eat it as a healthy snack. Thurlow and Harris-Pincus both marked this flavor as a way too high in sugar (22 additional grams on 23 grams in total). You may be better with a big coffee, honestly.

2. Carrot cake

If you catch this bar Clif Savor of the shelf and think you eat vegetables, you are mistaken unfortunately.

"The carrot cake bar sounds healthy because it has a vegetable in its name, but it packs 20 grams of added sugar," says Harris-Pincus. It gets stuck. The bar also contains red flag ingredients such as soy protein isolate, roasted soy, soy flour and soy lecithin. (FYI is a lot of soy products.)

3. Spicy pumpkin pie

Sorry, you are not better to satisfy your pumpkin pulp with this bar. This CLIF bar contains three different types of added sugars (23 grams in total) and four different types of soybeans. The protein and fiber here are just not worth all the other things. We are sure he has good taste, but it's about it.