Product review: Keto Bar (caramel flavour)

My chiro and I have this joke about a product that he sells in his practice: Keto Bars by Metagenics. These certainly don’t look as appetising as other popular brands in the market (e.g. Quest bars), in fact they have decided to make them look as the rest of their supplement brand either to reinforce their practitioner-only status and/or to save money in marketing.

Long time ago Daniel wanted to know my opinion about the ingredients list (see photo below) from a Nutrition student point of view. Being aware that I’m an advocate of minimal processing, he knew I would qualify it as crap, but still wanted me to give it a try and provide some feedback. So he gave me a caramel-flavoured bar (the most popular flavour) and recommended chugging plenty of water when eating it.

First off, I should say I think the product name is misleading. Per bar, the total amount of carbs is 20g, 6g coming from sugar. Lower carb than most bars, yes, but not necessarily keto. Protein content is 18g per bar (not bad, althoug it comes from both soy and whey) and fat content is 6g. The bars do not contain gluten, wheat, eggs and salt and according to the package, “contain nature identical flavours”, whatever that means.

The bar has a chocolate coating and a “caramel” filling. It’s on the soft side and, much to my surprise, it tasted better than Quest bars, a bit less artificial IMO. It was incredibly sweet, though (see? you don’t really need to put 6g of sugar in each bar, Metagenics people). Daniel’s advice re: water worked well to help offset the sweetness, although I think he was more concerned about digestibility.

Do I think these are healthy? As always, it depends. If they are going to replace a less healthy alternative with empty calories from sugar, then yes, these can be a step in the right direction.

Metagenics
www.metagenics.com.au

---

If you need nutrition advice, click here to check out our range of available services.