A Vegan Alternative

We’ve always been big fans of Squarebar. They’re pretty new to the health and protein bar scene, but they’re growing fast. Their ingredient profile sets them apart. According to their site, the Founder, Sarah, discovered that “eliminating inflammatory foods like gluten, dairy, soy, and processed sugars freed her from medication.”

Their bars taste amazing — they’re a bit high in sugar (13g), but their protein (11g) and fat (11g) are right on the dot for us. The dark chocolate coconut one is our favorite flavor.

A Vegan Alternative

You have to love a protein bar that says right on the packaging, ‘No Junk’. Suffice to say, the ingredients in these bars are terrific in quality and taste. They’re made with 100% organic and raw ingredients, like organic coconut, dates, cacao and Chia Seeds. There is truly ‘no junk’. In terms of their nutritional profile, the bars are a little high in healthy fat for our liking (at 17g), but the protein (16g), fiber (16g), and sugar (9g) are solid.

A Vegan Alternative

Vega is a pretty well-established brand in the health food industry. We use their vegan protein shakes and plant based protein supplement rather often. Their vegan protein bars are pretty good too. The dark chocolate peanut butter and dark chocolate cranberry are our favorite flavors, but feel free to poke through all their offerings. Their protein source comes from organic sprouted whole grain brown rice and pea protein. At 15 grams of protein, it makes for a solid bar. A bit high in sugar, for our taste, but they’re good to eat after a workout, or as a morning snack to get you out the door.

A Vegan Alternative

We’ve only recently tried Simply Protein bars. We’ve had their peanut butter chocolate flavor — which was just OK, in our opinion, in terms of taste. It’s tough to be their ingredient profile, however. Just to note, these bars use Soy Protein Isolate as their main source of protein, so if you’re not into soy products, this isn’t for you. Incredibly, these bars have 15g of protein, 5g of fat, and 1g of sugar.

A Vegan Alternative

In our opinion, GoMacro is the all-around perfect protein / snack / energy bar. They taste amazing (very natural and not synthetic tasting), use whole food ingredients, organic ingredients, and practice ethical sourcing with a number of their ingredients being Fair Trade. As you may have guessed from our taste palate so far, the dark chocolate peanut butter bar is our favorite flavor.

A Vegan Alternative

Nii Bar is another protein bar brand that uses relatively few ingredients in their bars (which we like to see). It’s just raw cashew butter, tapioca syrup, cacao, dates, coconut, coconut nectar, sunflower seeds, almonds, rice protein, hemp seeds and sprouted quinoa. They taste good too — kind of like a combination of KIND bars and Cliff bars, but a little less sweet.

A Vegan Alternative

So this bar is just 100 calories, which is pretty rare in the world of snack bars. And no, they don’t pack their bars with artificial fillers to achieve this low calories count. They use Chia seeds as a source of protein and are able to get a nice, sweet and fruity taste by using a number of fruit concentrates. As you can tell from the nutritional information on the front of the bar, they’re really more of a quick snack or energy bar, with only 3g of protein. Still much better than having a candy bar!