Balance Bars versus PowerBars

When it comes to diet and nutrition bars, I personally believe that Balance bars are far superior to PowerBars.

The young lady in the video at the end of this article sums up some good reasons for that, and she hits on the main point about the amount of carbohydrates that the PowerBar has, but apparently doesn't know about the Zone diet and the big picture significance of keeping your dietary carbohydrates low.

Balance Bars are Not Power Bars

Balance bars are a reflection of the Zone diet recommendations of Dr. Barry Sears. He combined the latest medical research into the hormonal effects -- especially regarding the balance of insulin and glucagon in our bodies -- of eating large amounts of carbohydrates in proportion to protein, with the findings of anthropologists.

A lot of people know that in earlier periods of history, people were generally smaller than they are now. Even when I was a boy, men six feet were considered very tall. However, now men that tall are quite common.

And earlier in history the difference was even greater. You can see it in the size of old houses in Europe and in the size of surviving suits of armor. People -- even men who were knights and therefore trained for battle and quite strong from exercise and hunting -- were smaller than most people these days.

balance bars

Now, notice how I keep referencing that fact to history. That's because when it comes to PREhistory -- before the introduction of agriculture, when people survived by hunting and gathering -- people were as big and strong -- if not bigger and stronger -- than they are today.

When anthropologists come across mixed up piles of human bones, they can easily separate those of prehistoric people from those of historical people.

Hunters have straight, big, strong bones. Farmers have crooked, small, weak bones.

What's the difference? It's not exercise. Ancient farmers worked constantly performing nonstop -- probably much harder than hunters who could relax after a successful kill.

Power Bars are Not Zone Balanced

Hunting and gathering societies tend to eat lots of lean game meat, wild eggs, nuts, vegetables and fruit (in season). Agricultural societies tend to eat lots of grain based foods -- bread, porridge and so on. They do raise vegetables and fruit. But they don't eat much protein. They may keep chickens, pigs and cattle, but nobody except kings were rich enough to kill and eat animals on a daily basis. They ate meat and poultry only when the animal was too old to lay eggs or give milk.

Power bars replicate that equation. They contain 26 grams of carbohydrates. The fruit smoothie I looked at had only 6 grams of protein. You may as well be eating a small plate of spaghetti with maybe one meatball for protein.

I will admit that the Power Bar Protein Plus 30 grams bar has a lot of protein in comparison to the carbohydrates. The Protein Plus Reduced Sugar version contains a lot of sugar alcohol, which is a form of carbohydrate that's poorly digested in your small intestines so they don't raise your blood sugar levels as much.

However, the proportions of these PowerBars are not exactly in the Zone of 40/30/30 nutrition, but they are a lot closer than regular energy bars. If you have to eat a Power Bar instead of a Balance bar, grab one of the Protein Plus 30 ones.

Overall, it's a good size for general health that both Balance bars and PowerBars are on the market.

Next: CarbWell Balance Bars -- bars with less than 40% carbohydrate.