Nutrition Bars or Glamorized Candy Bars
By Patrick Gamboa B.S.

Finding time for your workout, five meals, your work schedule, kids, housework, and appointments can lead to a hectic, high-stress day. Convenience and ease of use are a common selling point for many services and products. This need for convenience is evident in all aspects of modern life. The multi-billion dollar fitness industry has addressed the market of meal convenience in many ways, one being nutritional supplement bars.


The market is being flooded with new bars every day. How nutritious are they? Are the ingredients in these bars conducive to the bodybuilding lifestyle? Many of these nutrition bars are totting high protein and low-carbohydrate formulas in the hopes of attracting fitness enthusiast. How do these companies keep the bars palatable while keeping the nutrient ratio appealing? We will discuss nutrition bars, and if they can truly benfit the aspiring fitness enthusiast.


The original protein bars were synonymous with tasteless, brick-like concoctions. Today bars are soft, chewy, and come in a variety of flavors. In order to keep their bars low in carbohydrates; many companies are turning to sugar alcohol as a substitute for conventional carbohydrates. Check for ingredients that end in "ol" like sorbitol, xanithol, or glycerol. Most likely these will be sugar alcohol. Glycerol is the form of sugar alcohol most commonly used today. Glycerol is the chemical backbone to which one, two, or three fatty acids are attached to create fat. Triglycerides are stored in fat cells and in skeletal muscle fibers. To be used for energy, a triglyceride must be broken down to its basic unit: one molecule of glycerol and three molecules of free fatty acids. Glycerol helps keep the water within the bar, thus keeping it chewable and soft. Glycerol has no amine group and therefore cannot be classified as a protein. It has no fatty acids so it can not be classified as fat. The FDA classifies glycerol as a carbohydrate. Unlike carbohydrates, which have 4 cal/gm, glycerol has 4.32cal/gm. Unfortunately, many companies do not count alcohol when figuring nutrient breakdowns, and can thus keep their carbohydrate readings down.


Many of these bars use some form of fructose, in the form of high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, corn sweetener, sucrose, fruit sweetener, etc. Fructose is sweeter than regular sucrose (table sugar) and less expensive than glucose. So to keep cost down and their product palatable, many companies will turn to fructose.


The problem with fructose is that your muscles do not use it to replenish muscle glycogen stores. Glucose, in the form of complex carbohydrates, is a superior fuel for replenishing muscle glycogen. Your liver is able to store up to 100 grams of glycogen, and your muscles can store between 250 – 400 grams of glycogen. Muscle tissue has a specialized function (contraction), and does not have the various enzymes to inter-convert many metabolic intermediates. Muscle tissue can solely use glucose to replenish its glycogen stores. The liver is a very versatile metabolic organ and is able to recover its glycogen stores from a variety of different sources, including lactate, fructose, glucose, and amino acid metabolites. So if you were to ingest glucose in the form of complex carbohydrates, your liver would allow the glucose to pass through to the muscles for replenishment, in an attempt to keep the entire body in balance. Fructose in these nutrition bars replenishes your liver glycogen stores, and once your liver glycogen is full, any other simple sugars will have the propensity to be stored as fat. This occurs because fructose skips the regulatory enzyme phsophfructokinase-I, which is responsible, for making sure glycogen stores are full before fat synthesis is switched on. Nutrition bars full of fructose are probably something you want to do without. Now that we know how nutrition bars keep there label ratios low and how they keep the bars tasting like candy bars, we will discuss the fat and protein content of these nutrition bars.


Check one of your favorite candy bars and you are likely to find that the grams of fat are similar to that of your favorite nutrition bar. The manufacturers of these nutrition bars propose that the fat in their bars is "better" for you. Though many bars do add essential fatty acid mixtures, or use canola oil, the other fat generally comes from cocoa butter, cotton seed oil, fractionated vegetable oils, fractionated palm oil, hydrogenated oils, etc. The bottom line is that conventional fat has the propensity to be stored as bodyfat because it has the same molecular structure as bodyfat. These ingredients are not the most conducive to building lean body mass.


The big selling point to these bars is their purported high protein content. Most nutrition bars do have protein for sure, but how high is the quality? Once again the issue of cost effectiveness comes into play. The bars may contain hydrolyzed whey protein, whey protein isolate, caseinates, whey protein concentrates, soy protein isolates, hydrolyzed protein, and occasionally egg or beef protein. Most proteins get hard as the bars age. To keep the bars soft, manufacturers use hydrolyzed collagen because it is inexpensive and does not taste bad. Unfortunaelty it is not a high quality protein. Unless you're getting mainly whey protein concentrate or isolate and some type of caseinate, your nutrition bar will contain low quality protein that is not conducive to building a lean body.


Nutrition bars are a better alternative to fast food but should not be included as a staple of your nutrition regime. Most bars have you compromise optimum nutrition, and are far less effective then a meal replacement shake or a whole food balanced meal.


-Patrick Gamboa B.S.