Nutrition bars are every where now a days that claim to be healthy and good for weight loss or muscle building, but when you read the label, you see an endless list of ingredients that are far from healthy or natural. Many people want to combine their stomach exercises with energy bars as meal replacements and try to get ripped or toned abdominals. You better make sure you aren’t eating a fancy candy bar if you hope this plan will ever work.
While these ingredients aren’t necessarily bad on their own, here are some of the things you find in energy bars that I question whether they are really any different than a candy bar:

• High Fructose Corn Syrup
• High Carbs
• Saturated Fat or Trans Fats
• Processed Sugar
• Sweetened Chocolate
• Sugary Caramel

There are so many types of “health bars” and “protein bars” on the market today, how do you know if you are actually getting something healthy or just junk food in disguise?

As with buying anything healthy, you really need to know how to read labels if you’re going to stand a chance at finding a truly healthy food bar.

To be quite honest, most of the bars out there are pure junk. Health food labels but on common candy bars.

I am going to go over one supposed health food bar as an example. I will leave the brand name out of it because I know they are not the only ones like this.

The first ingredient in this bar is corn syrup! Then the second ingredient is sugar (hooray more sugar!), followed by hydrogenated oils (source of deadly trans fats). After that, there are artificial flavors, colors, artificial sweeteners, more hydrogenated refined oils, and rounded out with some highly processed soy protein isolate (which despite popular belief, processed soy is NOT healthy for you) just to give your body some more junk. I know a lot of people think zero calorie artificial sweeteners are better than sugar, but there is a lot of research that indicates they may actually be worse because of all the chemicals that go into making them.

Many times, these bars taste terrible in addition to being totally destructive to any weight loss efforts you are making! They taste like chemicals and are way too overly sweetened (not a surprise with all of the sugar, corn syrup, sugar alcohols, AND artificial sweeteners). This is a prime example of over-engineering of food.

So how do you know if an energy bar is good for you?
I look for simplicity in a good bar. The last thing you want is to sabotage your best ab workout with junk food. Many of the healthiest and tastiest bars I’ve found have only a couple basic ingredients such as nuts, seeds, and fruit. I also look for organic ingredients and raw ingredients if possible. These are better for you and usually taste better than their over fertilized cousins.

A couple of my favorite truly healthy bars:

1. Organic Food Bars – This is actually the brand name.

Depending on which flavor, these are usually a base of organic almond butter (or cashew butter) with a certain type of fruit, organic seeds, organic biosprouts, and some organic rice protein. Some flavors include an organic dark chocolate as well. They also have a line of bars that use exclusively raw ingredients.

Not only are these bars extremely nutritious, but I think they are delicious as well and have a lot of flavors to choose from such as chocolate chip, blueberry, cranberry, high protein, and more.

You won’t find these bars at your local grocery store, but I have found them at several health food stores. You can also search the internet and find places to buy them by the case or contact a near by health food store and see if they will ship them to you by the case. Health food stores are usually very helpful in trying to get you what you need.

2. Larabars – These are even simpler in ingredients than organic food bars. Usually larabars are just 2 or 3 ingredients, and mostly raw… a blend of crushed nuts along with a type of fruit is the usual combination, but they have a lot of different flavors so it can vary.
These are also delicious and you will NEVER see a list of chemicals a mile long in their ingredient list… usually just nuts and fruit, and that’s it! Simple IS better. This is a very high quality bar. Again, you probably won’t find these at your local grocery store, but I’ve found these at various health food markets.

When you actually find truly healthy bars like these examples above, they make great quick snacks while you are traveling or while you are at work. If you keep things like this around, it makes it easy for you to have a healthy snack when you get the munchies or your belly starts grumbling.

I carry some on me almost at all times, just to make sure I have healthy options to eat whenever I need a quick snack, so that I am not tempted by fast food joints or junk food vending machines. Good luck and be sure to read those labels to make sure you’re getting a health food bar and not a candy bar in disguise. If you’re interested in improving your health, losing some fat, and getting a tone or ripped abdomen, check out a way to take your stomach exercises to a new level with a complete health and fitness program. While you’re there, grab a free fat loss report which details 27 unique methods for boosting your metabolism and losing belly fat – BetterAbWorkout.com