I’ve had a love-hate relationship with healthy snacks. So many of the choices out there are nothing more than candy disguised as health food. Bars like Nature Valley were made by folks that thought they were doing the right thing in taking a “granola” bar and adding a little flavor. Healthy snacks have come a long way since then.

PowerBar and CLIF were some of the early big winners in the shift to including actual macro nutrients that improved performance. My favorite was PowerBar – an option that sustained me through most of my 30,000 cycling miles and numerous races.

In recent years, I shifted to the BUILDER’S bar by CLIF, finding a half dozen flavors that I really liked. I was buying them by the case. With my move to add CrossFit to my life, I also added a nutritionist into the mix. The first thing she poo-pooed were my BUILDER’S bars. In addition to some great protein (20-22 grams per bar) they also had too much sugar (also 20-22 grams per bar.)

I had heard about the Questbar and decided to give it a shot. I first tried the Double Chocolate Chunk Questbar. I really liked it and at 20g protein and only 1g of sugar, it made my nutritionist much happier. Of course, the next step was to try them all and stock up.

As you can see in the picture there is a mixture of leftover bars of other brands as well as a huge selection of Questbars. So far, I have tried two more of the QBs and I can’t say I like them all. The Chocolate Brownie bar is excellent. The Cookies & Cream was absolutely horrible. It tasted like someone sprinkled Stevia over particle board and sawdust. Uggh – not a fan.

I have a bunch more to try so I may be sharing my thoughts on those in the future.  Next is to try MooTopia and see if I can stomach healthy protein-packed milk.

by Chris Doelle

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