Hey my healthy friends, Happy Wednesday! To celebrate the half way point in the week, I am excited to share with you a new to me product, Nākd bars. A few weeks ago I received an email from Greg from Total Media asking if I would be interested in trying Nākd bars from a UK company called Natural Balance Foods. After a little bit of research on the company and the product, I emailed him back saying I would definitely be interested in trying them out. Two days later, I had this beautiful box of delicious goodness delivered to my house.
I loved the presentation of the bars and the box with it’s “Hello Gorgeous” on the top just made me smile (great marketing Nākd!!)
What first drew me in when doing my research was that Nākd is a brand that truly prides themselves on not only being wheat, gluten and dairy free, but their bars contain 100% natural ingredients. Their Nākd snack bars are made from 100% raw fruit and nuts and contain no added sugar or syrups, which I think is pretty spectacular! Depending on the bar’s flavor, the bars contain mostly dates, cashews, almonds, pecans, and raisins and you can pronounce every ingredient in their bars! Another added benefit is that their fruit-based bars also count towards one of your 5 fruits a day–pretty sweet!
We are all really busy people, juggling a lot of priorities. May of us start our days in the wee hours of the morning getting in our daily workouts then commuting to work, working a full day then commuting back home where some of us are running after our kids, dogs, etc. I don’t know about you, but it can be really hard for me to find 30 minutes free during the work week to eat anything. I am usually shaking my blender bottle with my protein shake on my way to my first meeting of the morning and am in back to back meetings until the end of the day on most days. That leaves me super hangry by 3 p.m. and it would be great to have some sort of healthy sustenance for my commute home. As much as I’d love to grab a bar to snack on during the day, most bars, protein or otherwise, are not a good option for me as most contain sugar alcohols like sorbitol and my body cannot handle them without severe discomfort, so I tend to stay away from most bars. Plus, most of them are packed with tons of sugar and processed junk so I’d rather not eat them. Did you know:
“A typical cereal bar can contain as many as 30 ingredients, many of which are completely unrecognizable and several of which are actually just various types of sugar. Despite what it says on the pack we all know that these heavily processed, syrup-laden and additive-filled cereal bars are not really ‘healthy’ at all!”
That’s a pretty big difference in the list of ingredients, don’t you think?
In my box, I got 18 bars in a variety of flavors like berry delight, cashew cookie, cocoa mint, pecan pie, cocoa orange and caffe mocha to name a few! Before writing this review, I wanted to be able to try 1 of each flavor so that I could be confident in my review with you all.
Overall, these are great bars. The flavors were really good, with my favorite being cocoa mint or berry delight and my least favorite was Rhubarb & Custard. They are pretty small in size (which makes them perfect for a quick snack) but they are very dense bars and remind me a lot of Lara bars in their look and consistency. I have used them as both pre and post workout fuel and quick on the go snacks. Ashton really enjoyed them as well and I even caught him reaching into the box to “grab a bar” for himself when I wasn’t looking (sneaky little kid!!)
I had two negatives to the bars, but neither one is something that would stop me from eating them. First is that the nutritional content is in kcals (which makes sense because its a UK brand) but I like to know how many calories are in each bar from the packaging (depending on the flavor, they range from 130-160 per bar with 3-4 grams of protein.) I wasn’t hard to get on my phone and do the calculation, but I would have preferred it to be right on the packaging in calories. For a lot of people this is not a big deal, it was just a minor thing I would have changed.
Additionally, these bars are kind of high in sugar. Although it is all natural sugars from dates, raisins, etc as they do not add any additional sugar, they clock in at 11-18 grams per bar. Again, while higher in sugar, for me, natural sugar is always better than added or chemical substitutes so I was okay with this as well, but I feel its an important thing to point out when doing a review.
I know that once I am through with this box, I will definitely be restocking on them as they are perfect when I am running in between meetings or after my morning workout before I have a chance to make my protein shake.
The good news is that Nākd has arrived in the US! You can purchase via their website right now with free shipping (the sampler box is only $9.99!) and they will be coming to US stores shortly so be on the lookout! If you live in Canada, you can find them in stores now. Be sure to visit their website to check out more about this great company and their products!
***Disclaimer: Natural Balance Foods sent me a box of bars in exchange for a review but as always, all opinions are my own.***
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Question of the day
Do you regularly eat bars? What brand? Have you heard of Nākd bars before?
