In my quest to find the best protein bar on the market, today I’m breaking down Anabar White Chocolate Fruity Cereal Crunch.
But first things first…
According to their website:
We take pride in putting our customers first! That means providing products that are of the highest quality & ensuring that every step of the way the customer experience is 5 Stars!
Anabar was launched on March 18th of 2021 & quickly became the hottest bar on the market! Before launch we knew we really had something special & a true industry first in the protein bar space. After selling out multiple launches in a row we realized we had something truly special on our hands. We now employ a full staff dedicated to making sure every bar you buy is of the highest quality & every order you place is packaged & to you as fast as humanly possible.
So, the highest quality protein bars on the market, right?
Well… only one way to find out.
In the crowded landscape of nutritional snacks, Anabar has garnered attention, not for its commitment to premium ingredients, but rather for its controversial use of low-quality components. This review takes a discerning look at the breakdown of Anabar's ingredients, shedding light on the subpar choices that have raised eyebrows among health-conscious consumers.
Let’s ignore the Nutrition Facts for a moment and just focus on the long list of ingredients. The first thing that you’ll notice is that their top ingredient (peanut butter) is made up of 5 different ingredients — only one of which is peanuts! Can’t blame them though because that’s how the ingredient list looks of almost every protein bar on the market.
If only there were a better way to create protein bars that aren’t just candy bars in disguise. (Foreshadowing)
So, let’s break these ingredients down into an easy to read list.
As might already know, the FDA requires food manufacturers to list their ingredients in order by weight.
Which means that Anabar's White Chocolate Fruity Cereal Crunch bar is filled with mostly ultra processed seed oils and honey. I mean, yes it contains 20 grams of protein (from whey protein isolate), but surely there are better alternatives to getting 20 grams of protein without all the damaging chemicals and ultra processed ingredients.
Just by looking at the peanut butter in the ingredient list, we’re faced with a problem.
That’s not real peanut butter.
Let me explain: it’s not like Anabar ground up some peanuts to use in their protein bars. They’re using peanut butter made with peanuts, sugar, vegetable oils, and more sugars.
I don’t know about you, but I’d like my peanut butter free from cottonseed or rapeseed oil. And I’m not too keen on the dextrose or the monoglycerides.
How about peanut butter made with… just peanuts? Single-ingredient food sources are a foreign concept in the world of consumer packaged foods, and unfortunately for Anabar, they fit the typical mold of junk food companies disguised as healthy foods.
Did you notice something in the white chocolate?
I’ll give you a hint:
It doesn’t have any real chocolate. We know this because there’s no mention of cacao, or cocoa butter.
I don’t think you can just combine sugar and palm oil with milk — and call it white chocolate. That’s without even mentioning the glyceryl-lacto esters, soy lecithin, salt and artificial flavors.
What does Anabar say about this?
We use 100% Authentic White Chocolate as a coating to enhance the flavors & create a truly memorable experience with every bar!
No, I’m not gonna call that authentic. Or white chocolate.
Why use brown rice syrup when you already use honey?
Brown rice syrup is a sweetener made from brown rice. You add enzymes to cooked rice to break down starches and turn them into smaller sugars, then filtering out the impurities.
Brown rice syrup contains three sugars — maltotriose (52%), maltose (45%), and glucose (3%).
Wait, don’t think there’s no glucose. Maltose is just two glucose molecules, while maltotriose is three glucose molecules.
So, brown rice syrup acts like 100% glucose inside your body.
Maybe Anabar needed to use brown rice syrup because honey wasn’t sweet enough. But we’ll never know.
Did you notice colors like Red 40, Yellow 6, Blue 1 on the list?
Well, they’re banned in Europe.
And California banned Red 3 in their state last year, in 2023.
Anabar’s fruity cereal bar is packed with cheap ingredients. Peanut butter has cottonseed/rapeseed oil. White chocolate doesn’t have chocolate. And the fruit cereal mix has artificial colors banned in the EU.
They have 20 grams of protein from whey protein isolate. And that might be the only redeeming quality in them, which is a major stretch. Considering the low quality nature of all the other ingredients on the label, we suspect the whey protein used to also be of low quality. It’s certainly not from pasture-raised grass fed cows.
Which is why I can’t recommend it to you.
But if you’re looking for a real protein bar with real ingredients, see below.
Unearth the cleanest protein bars you can buy right now. (Some might even have superfoods)
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