PowerBar Taste-Off

Four tired and hungry walkers paused after twelve miles of marathon training and pitted five varieties of PowerBar energy bars against their palates.

PowerBar Protein Plus Chocolate Peanut Butter

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The favorite of 2 out of the 4 walkers. The flavor was very good and it chewed easily. The chocolatey coating broke up from carrying it in a pack, but it wasn't messy. This high protein bar packs 23 grams of protein into its 290 calories, with only 5 grams of fat. It also provides 100% of the daily requirement for several vitamins. It can easily function as a meal replacement bar.

PowerBar Harvest Double Chocolate

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The favorite of the other 2 out of 4 walkers. Will noted that it made him want a cup of coffee to accompany it. At 250 calories, it may seem lighter, but it carries plenty of calories. The selling point is that they are made with whole grains - oats and rice in this case. It has 4 grams of fiber, 7 grams of protein and 16 essential vitamins and minerals.

PowerBar Cookies and Cream

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This is the original PowerBar style - as one reviewer said, "Putty consistency and appearance." They commented that it was too sweet. This can apply to all of the original style PowerBars, but this one also had "weird cookie bits" in it that tended to stick to the teeth. The 240 calories pack a carbohydrate whallop and include 9 grams of protein and 3 grams of fiber. The advantage is that they have no coating to melt or crumble and they keep well in your pack. This kind of PowerBar seems to be a bit more easily chewable than it was several years ago.

PowerBar Harvest Toffee Chocolate Chip

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I was the sole reviewer who enjoyed this bar. I love toffee-flavored things. But 2 of the 4 simply hated it. And the last person said she would eat it, but only to ward off starvation. Oddly enough, since they loved the Harvest Double Chocolate, they knocked this flavor for being "styrofoam-like" although both use crispy rice as a base. However, they said the chocolate part of this flavor was not chocolatey. As with the other Harvest flavors, it uses whole grains, natural sweeteners, and provides a many vitamins and minerals in 260 calories.

Energy Bar Conclusions

It's hard to convince health-sensitive walkers that what they really need after 12 miles is simple sugars for energy, not excess protein or a day's worth of added vitamins. Too much protein and too much of some vitamins make the body work harder to break them down and excrete them or their byproducts. Fancier types of bars - high protein, etc. - should be used as meal replacements rather than for an energy boost when walking long distances for marathon training. If you enjoy energy bars as a treat, know that they pack as many calories as a candy bar, usually at twice the cost.

What is in that Energy Bar?

Energy bar detective Will Glessner gave a good long study to the ingredients of the bars we tested, and he made some very interesting discoveries in the way companies list the ingredients:
Energy Bar Ingredients Decoded