Reality of You

Real talk about health, fitness, and weight loss.

  • Blog
  • Most Popular
  • Recipes
    • 5-Minute Meals
  • Categories
    • Weight Loss
    • 30 Day Clean Eating Challenge
    • Fit Student
  • Meet Amy
    • Contact Me
  • Reality of Happy
    • Bookshelf
    • Psychology Studies
    • Reality of Beauty
    • Rules of Thumb

Amy Suto April 15, 2013 3 Comments

How to Read a Food Label (Clif Bar vs. Kind Bar)

How to Read Food Labels

Ideally, you want to eat foods that don’t have wrappers. Whole, natural foods always win.

But when you do buy foods from a box or a package, you should know how to read the labels and make the best choices.

Here are some basic rules:

  1. The fewer ingredients, the better. If you can’t pronounce any of the ingredients, that’s a red flag.
  2. If sugar comes first, throw it out. If sugar or any of its counterparts show up first on the label — glucose, sucrose, high fructose corn syrup — avoid at all costs! The ingredients are listed in order of quantity, so if sugar’s on the label it should be last, or close to the end at least.
  3. Stay away from high fructose corn syrup. I don’t care how “natural” the company claims it to be. According to Dr. Mark Hyman in his book The Blood Sugar Solution, “high-fructose corn syrup is an industrial food product and far from “natural.” It is extracted from corn stalks through a chemical process and is biochemically novel compound that is sweeter and cheaper than cane sugar (sucrose)” (Hyman). But that’s not all High Fructose Corn Syrup does. The Children’s Hospital Oakland Reesearch Institute “found that every molecule of free fructose from HFCS requires more energy to be absorbed by the gut and soaks up two phosphorous molecules from ATP (our body’s energy source). This depletes the ATP required to maintain the integrity of our intestinal lining” (Hyman). Now are you convinced that HFCS is evil?
  4. It’s not all about calories. The quality of the food matters just as much as the quantity of the calories! Some of those notorious 100-calorie snack packs that Nabisco sells may seem appealing because of their calorie count, but check the  label. Do they contain artificial ingredients? A lot of sugar? You’d be better off eating 100 calories of fruit or vegetables!

Let’s look at the label for a Kind bar, which is a trendy and tasty health bar out on the market. I’ll compare it to the label for a Clif Bar, another well-known “health” bar on the market. In the process, hopefully you guys will be able to evaluate different foods on your own!

Kind Bar (Cranberry)

kind bar nutrition facts label

kind bar nutrition facts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clif Bar (Oatmeal Raisin Walnut)

clif bar nutrition facts

 

 

clif bar nutrition facts label

The Nutrition Battle

Here we go!

The bars aren’t the same size exactly, but I’ll do my best to whip out my basic math skills in order to put them on a level playing field.

Calories

The Kind bar has a few more calories when you adjust for calories per gram, but it’s not really that big of a deal because almonds are first on the list of ingredients. Almonds are calorically dense foods, but they’re really nutritious and speed up your metabolism.

Both of these calorie counts are on the lower end of the health bar spectrum, which is also good.

Fat

The Kind Bar wins this round. It has more saturated and unsaturated fat than the Clif Bar, but unsaturated fats (both poly and mono) are good for you! Once again, I suspect these come from the lovely almonds that this bar has so much of. The good fat outweighs the bad in this case.

Trans Fat

Trans fat is bad. Like, really really really bad. Avoid at all costs. I don’t have time to get into a rant about it today, but basically it’s an evil kind of fat responsible for junk food addictions.

Luckily, these bars have none, so rejoice!

Sodium

The Clif Bar loses in the sodium battle. A good daily limit for sodium is 2,000 mg, so the sodium in the Clif Bar isn’t anything outrageous, but it’s still not as good as the Kind Bar.

Carbs

To be honest, carbs don’t really matter in this case. Why? Because they’re good carbs since they’re full of fiber and are not from white flour. Good carbs are absorbed more slowly by our bodies and don’t cause our insulin levels to spike.

Dietary Fiber

It was a close battle, but the Cranberry Kind bar wins when fiber is adjusted for the size of the bar! I suspect the fiber comes from all of the almonds, which is awesome.

Both these bars are good sources of fiber.

Protein

The Clif Bar wins! It has more protein than the Kind Bar, but both are good sources of protein.

Sugars

Here’s where most health bars get into trouble. The Clif Bar is very high in sugar. 22 grams! That’s a lot for what’s supposed to be a “health bar.” A can of coke has around 39g.

The American Heart Association recommends less than 6 teaspoons (25.2g) per day for women and less than 9 teaspoons (37.8g) per day for men of added sugar.

So if you eat one Clif Bar, you have 3.2g left of added sugar for the day. 

The Kind Bar wins the sugar battle, but still is kinda high in sugar (12g) for its size.

The Winner

The Kind Bar wins!

This outcome is also awesome because in my opinion the Cranberry Kind bar tastes fantastic and far better than Clif bars.

You can order them here:

 

Sources:

Hyman, Mark. The Blood Sugar Solution: The Ultrahealthy Program for Losing Weight, Preventing Disease, and Feeling Great Now! New York, NY: Little, Brown and, 2012. Print.

 

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured -- Healthy, Reality of Healthy, Slider, Weight Loss

Comments

  1. Lauren says

    April 15, 2013 at 6:00 pm

    I would also highly recommend Yawp bars. They have very few ingredients, no added sugar (the sweetness comes from the dates and the cinnamon) and they’re actually really delicious! –> http://www.yawpeats.com/

    Reply
    • AmyMSuto says

      April 15, 2013 at 6:21 pm

      Awesome! Thanks for the suggestion, Lauren! I haven’t tried those before and they look delicious.

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. YAWP! Paleo Nutrition Bars [Review] says:
    July 27, 2013 at 11:01 pm

    […] you guys remember my article about how to read packaged food labels, I pushed Kind and Clif bars into the ring to duke it out. However, both food bars failed in the […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

Meet Amy

amy2

Hey there! I'm Amy and I run this fine establishment. Please, sit down and let me get you some green tea and tell you about the wonders of wearing yoga pants 24/7. About Me

Recent Posts

  • App Workout Challenge Day #4: 7 Minute Superhero Workout!
  • App Workout Challenge Day #3: FitStar Yoga
  • Vanilla Cinnamon Flaxseed Protein Pancakes
  • App Workout Challenge Day #2: CARROT Fit
  • App Workout Challenge Day #1: Zombies Run

30 Day Health & Fitness Challenges

30 Day Clean Eating Challenge

30 Day iPhone App Workout Challenge

30 Day Youtube Workout Challenge

Guide to the 30 Day Shred

Categories

  • 30 Day Challenges
  • 30 Day Clean Eating Challenge
  • 30 Day iPhone App Workout Challenge
  • 5-Minute Meals
  • 7 Day Clean-Up
  • All Posts
  • Bookshelf
  • Breakfast
  • Clean Eating Recipes
  • Featured – Happy
  • Featured — Healthy
  • Featured Workout
  • Fit Student
  • Fitness Apps
  • Fitness Basics
  • Free Stuff!
  • Health Reality Checks
  • Healthy Dorm Recipes
  • Mixed Bag
  • Product Reviews
  • Psychology Studies
  • Real Healthy Recipes
  • Reality of Beauty
  • Reality of Happy
  • Reality of Healthy
  • Rules of Thumb
  • Slider
  • Top Article
  • Weight Loss
  • Workout Review
  • Workout Reviews

Search and You Will Find

Categories

My Twitter

Tweets by @RealityofSocial

Recent Comments

  • Folden Darnell on Weight Loss Troubleshooting: 5 Common Workout Routine Mistakes
  • Match free trial on Clean Eating Challenge: 5 Best Detox Fruit Waters (Day 16)
  • Smitu on Clean Eating Challenge: 5 Best Detox Fruit Waters (Day 16)
  • can't login to plenty of fish on Clean Eating Challenge: 5 Best Detox Fruit Waters (Day 16)
  • Jimmy Johnson on Clean Eating Challenge: 5 Best Detox Fruit Waters (Day 16)

Post Archives

January 2021
S M T W T F S
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31  
« Nov    

Share This!

Tags

30 day iphone app workout challenge 30 day workout program benefits of clean eating body shapes caffeine clean eating clean eating challenge clean recipes coffee endorphins fitness fitness app five minute meals food free stuff giveaway happiness happy health healthy eating healthy recipe hummus inspiration motivation motivational optimism people pilates psychology of attraction radiant reality of you recipes scale sexual attraction slider smiling strength training tea weight loss welcome workout workout plan YAWP bars yoga zombies run

Check Out My Pinterest!

Follow me on Pinterest for more motivation, and never miss an article!

Follow Me on Instagram! @swansandsparrows

This error message is only visible to WordPress admins

Error: No connected account.

Please go to the Instagram Feed settings page to connect an account.

Copyright © 2021 · Streamline Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in