The healthy snackbar segment is huge and growing. It seems that manufacturers have figured out a way to dress up candy bars as healthy, and fill our craving for an anytime, anywhere treat. To be fair, there are many decent products out there, but some are not much more than glorified Snickers or Twix bars.

Let’s take a look at Kellogg’s Fiber Plus Dark Chocolate Almond Bar, which boasts 35% of the daily value of fiber and, as a comparison, Larabar’s Chocolate Coconut bar.

What you need to know:

We’ll begin by comparing some nutrients. The Fiber plus bar is rather small (36 grams) and  contains 130 calories. The Larabar is 40% bigger at 51 grams and has 84% more calories – 240.

On the fiber front, Kellogg’s wins hands down with 9 grams vs Larabar’s 5 grams. And sugar-wise it contains only 7 grams, vs 22 grams. That’s 2 teaspoons of sugar vs 5 and a half. Larabar does have 5 grams of protein vs only 2 grams for Kellogg’s.

So far it seems like Kellogg’s has the upper hand – less calories, less sugar, much more fiber. Just what the doctor ordered. Right?

Not so fast. Let’s have a peek under the hood shall we?

Here’s the ingredient list for fiber plus:

CHICORY ROOT FIBER, ROLLED OATS, CRISP RICE (RICE FLOUR, SUGAR, MALT EXTRACT, SALT, MIXED TOCOPHEROLS FOR FRESHNESS), SUGAR, ROASTED ALMONDS, INULIN FROM CHICORY ROOT, SEMISWEET CHOCOLATE DROPS (SUGAR, CHOCOLATE, COCOA BUTTER, DEXTROSE, MILK FAT, SOY LECITHIN, CONFECTIONER’S GLAZE [SHELLAC, HYDROGENATED COCONUT OIL]), VEGETABLE OIL (HYDROGENATED PALM KERNEL, COCONUT AND PALM OIL), FRUCTOSE, CANOLA OIL, CONTAINS TWO PERCENT OR LESS OF HONEY, CHOCOLATE, COCOA (PROCESSED WITH ALKALI), GLYCERIN, TRICALCIUM PHOSPHATE, WHEY, SALT, BAKING SODA, SOY LECITHIN, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, SORBITAN MONOSTEARATE, POLYSORBATE 60, VITAMIN E ACETATE, GUM ARABIC, ZINC OXIDE, NONFAT DRY MILK, WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR, PARTIALLY DEFATTED PEANUT FLOUR, SOY PROTEIN ISOLATE, BHT (FOR FRESHNESS), XANTHAN GUM.

and for Larabar:

Dates, Almonds, Walnuts, Unsweetened Cocoa Powder, Unsweetened Coconut.

A whopping 54 Kellogg’s ingredients vs. 5 for Larabar. Even before reading through the ingredient list, one must ask herself, why does a bar need so many things inside?  Compare to 5 human readable ingredients from Larabar.

Here’s what happened with Kellogg’s: When your first and foremost ingredient is chicory root fiber, not a “food” people consume regularly, you have to make up for it with a long list of other stuff to make the product taste good. Four mentions of sugars, shellac (a bug extract), glycerin, soy lecithin, artificial flavors, natural flavors, BHT, polysorbates – who really needs all these? What about simple real food? Can’t Kellogg’s take a page from Larabar’s book?

Larabar’s ingredients help explain it’s high sugar content – from the dates.  Its fiber comes from the dates, almonds and walnuts. No wonder the calorie count is high either – it is both a larger bar and it contains nuts with fats, albeit good ones.

Too bad Larabar doesn’t come in a mini-size, about half the current bar, then it would be the hands down winner in this match-up, both from an ingredient perspective and a caloric one.

What to do at the supermarket:

Buying bars, be on the lookout for ingredient lists the length of a Stephen King novel. They tell the story of a highly processed product manufactured to tell a certain story about certain nutrients (in this case – fiber). Watch for the sugar content and whether it is added, or simply comes from the dried fruit in the bar.

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