Granola bars?

[Irish Pride]

When I get up I can't eat breakfast. My stomach just isn't ready for it. My morning routine is that I wake up and spend about 15 minutes waking up before hitting the tredmill at a fast walking speed for a half hour. It wakes me up and gives me some good exercise. An hour later I'm at work but still unable to eat breakfast. An hour after that I'm finally hungry.

Long story short, I'm looking to buy some granola bars to keep at work as a quick easy breakfast.

What are peoples recommendations for healthy granola bars. Is Koshi (spelling?) stuff just a big name and actually not a good healthy source?

[Irish Pride]

275 views and nobody eats granola bars? lol

i think you are thinking about kashi bars ... never heard if they are good or not ... i have heard larabars are good too

man i totally understand your dilema. My day starts around 4:30am and it's 8:30 before i'm, "ready" to eat. Loading down your desk with snacks is a great idea and granola bars could be fine. Just read the labels and find the best ratio of carbs to fat / sugar. most granola bars have the nutritional value of a snickers bar so keep that in mind. I use that as a justification for eating a snickers bar every once in a while .

However a while back my trainer took over my diet and has me carb loading first thing in the morning with oatmeal, or whole wheat bagels etc. taking vitamins and then eating every couple hour straight thru to my evening workouts. Then for dinner we hit the protein hard. The first few weeks were very hard and the breakfast would even make me throw up butttt. now i cant imagine missing breakfast and my performance and weight loss have increased a ton!

some snacks i keep on hand - fruit, veggies, bagels, ginger snaps, low fat whole wheat crackers, oatmeal, nuts, dried fruit, cottage cheese and of course a snickers bar. Only buy one snickers bar at a time or they will get eaten to fast.

have fun and keep up that morning walk!

kashi bars are great

I haven't read a Kashi bar, but a couple of their cereals are ok while the others are average. (Thanks for the word suntereo.)

I hunted down bars a while ago. One guideline cited an ideal intake for fats/oils is 10% by calories for cardiovascular health--seemingly an extreme. I wonder, at that level, if that's enough lipid intake to help properly process various vitamins/minerals. I'm sorry; I forget where I saw it. I find that 20-25% of calories from lipids is do-able, per day. Many bars are lipid-heavy, proportionally (e.g. 170cals, 120 from lipids), or sugar heavy.

If you're looking for bars and reading labels, check what the protein & fiber look like. If you're looking for a meal replacement or a snack (5 eats per day type thing), I've carved my meal/snacks down to being a rough 250-400 calories each. I didn't actually count each calorie. Don't over-think it; just glance at portion size. With a bar, are you getting enough food for the session until the next time you'll eat? Good protein is harder to come by; sugar is not.

Regarding fiber, when "whole grain" became the rage, one realist cautioned people to read labels. Unlike lucky charms, a food was only potentially whole grain if there were 100 carb-cals per 2 gram fiber. (Why they didn't say 50cal/g, I don't know.) So, when you check sugar content, look at it in the context of sugar vs total carb & relative to fiber. Then, after all that, is there other nutrition in it? Are there enough various vitamins/minerals.

The first thing I read on a label for anything supplementary is for artificial sweeteners. They're a primary eliminator.

So, in short:
- No artificial sweeteners (sucralose, aspartame, asulfa-something K)
- no sugar alcohols
- no weird other chemistry (short list, msg, others)
- Lower proportion of calories from fats (by calories)
- sufficient protein (by mass, grams)
- Carb cals relative to fiber
- lower proportion of carb cals from sugar, by mass
- Sodium? vs potassium?
- Vitamins & Minerals, esp if meal replacement

I did a small spreadsheet comparing bars within the Odwalla brand. (Stop laughing; I was curious.) Their basic protein bar was the best within the brand. It actually has more potassium than sodium. Some other bars are either too sugary or too fatty. You will always be heavy in either of those, sugar or fat. However, that bar gets most of the protein from soy, which is not necessarily a good human food (especially if you're a B blood).

Originally Posted by suntereo

....
However a while back my trainer took over my diet and has me carb loading first thing in the morning with oatmeal, or whole wheat bagels etc. taking
....
some snacks i keep on hand - fruit, veggies, bagels, ginger snaps, low fat
...
have fun and keep up that morning walk!

Hey man, was that morning diet carb heavy added to a maintained regular amount of protein, or was it more toward not-protein-diligent in the morning?

(Banana-as-snack rocks! Just had one.)

What vitamins do you like & why?

CLIF builders bar.

The best breakfast.

Originally Posted by Conrad

Hey man, was that morning diet carb heavy added to a maintained regular amount of protein, or was it more toward not-protein-diligent in the morning?

(Banana-as-snack rocks! Just had one.)

What vitamins do you like & why?

every body is different so the goal for mine was to get better muscle endurance and cardio for my goal of wrestling competitively at 38yrs old. My diet is 60/25/15 carb/protien/fat in a 3000 calories. I'm 5'9" and 185lbs @ 15% body fat, so "bulking up" is kinda silly. So the short answer is not protein diligent in the morning. Also worth noting is that i own a business and work 10-12hrs a day 5-6 days a week in addition to coaching wrestling and fitting in my workouts so it would be tough for me to get too much clean readily available foods that my body doesnt have to work too hard to process (carbs?)

Originally Posted by Conrad

Hey man, was that morning diet carb heavy added to a maintained regular amount of protein, or was it more toward not-protein-diligent in the morning?

(Banana-as-snack rocks! Just had one.)

What vitamins do you like & why?

vitamins -
performance multivitamin - cause i'm old
mega dose of D - cause i'm from hawaii but live in seattle now and it keeps me from killing myself.
fish oil from salmon and papaya enzymes - digestive health, doesnt make sense to eat good if the belly cant process it.

from there i treat myself with vitamins as my body asks for them. my wifes a personal trainer and has a huge stash of crap i can raid anytime.