I first heard of the Fori bars a couple of weeks ago, and I was intrigued, but mostly sceptical. A meat based savoury bar? Really? I pictured something like a burger or sausage in a wrapper. I was keen to ‘meat’ the team though, and have a look at what the Fori bars were about, and I realised that they had been undersold to me.
The Fori bar is far from your regular protein bar, and is more like real food than a dietary supplement. Actually, the Fori bars aren’t like food, they are real food, and I was lucky enough to try each of the bars they make. So let’s have a look at the Fori bars in a bit more detail.
Ingredients & nutrition
You can see the list of ingredients and nutritional information for each of the 3 Fori bars in the image below.
Click to enlarge
You can see that there is quite a nutritional contrast between the Fori bars and other high protein bars. Below you can see a comparison table of the minted lamb Fori bar with a Quest bar (which have enjoyed the reputation of being considered a healthy protein bar) and a Maximuscle Promax Lean bar, which is a pretty standard protein bar.
| Nutrient | Fori Bar | Quest Bar | Maximuscle bar |
|---|---|---|---|
| Protein | 15.1g | 20g | 23g |
| Sugar | 5.6g | 1g | 10g |
| Fat | 11.7g | 1g | 4.6g |
| Non-food ingredient* | Lactic acid | Corn fibre, erythritol, flavours, calcium carbonate, steviol glycosides | Collagen hydrolysate, soya lecithin, cocoa mass, sugar, maltitol, xylotol, partly inverted sugar syrup, fructooligosaccharides, L-carnitine, fat-reduced cocoa powder, maltodextrin, flavourings, caffeine, green tea extract, vitamin B5, colours |
*An ingredient which requires excessive extraction, concentration or is synthetically produced to provide an un-natural nutritional profile.
You can see from the table that the Fori bars have much much less non-food ingredients, no extracts, and no concentrates – great.
Now I know extracts such as green tea are not particularly bad, but what I want to avoid is the sugar alcohols from the Quest bars, and the sugar, maltitol, xylotol, partly inverted sugar syrup, and maltodextrin from the Maximuscle bar. These are all crap ingredients, which, despite all the clever labelling, are all essentially sugar in different forms (which means they get to avoid putting it in the ‘sugar’ section of their nutritional information). They offer no nutrition, and will leave you feeling bloated and over-fed.
If possible, I would even avoid the whey and milk proteins which the Maximuscle bar and Quest bar contain. There isn’t anything wrong with whey as a protein source, but it isn’t food, it’s a supplement, and food always beats supplements with regards to nutrition and taste.
The Fori bars on the other hand are made with whole foods – just grass-fed meat, nuts, egg white and herbs, which makes them a nutritionally superior bar. The nuts, herbs and fruit will provide additional vitamins/ minerals which the other bars won’t provide, and, as the bar is just like eating a handful of nuts/ berries with some meat, the nutrients are all in naturally occurring ratios. This means that the absorption and retention of the nutrients (including the protein) will be higher than taking supplements.
The 5-8g less protein the Fori bars have in comparison to the other bars is of no concern to me. In the scheme of your daily intake it’s irrelevant, and I know that I would prefer to eat some delicious and nutritionally balanced lamb meat than protein powder.
The moderate amount of fat is refreshing to see, and its not from vegetable oil either! Despite controversy revolving around animal fats, they are quite healthy, and amongst other things, will slow the absorption of the nutrients from the Fori bars. This avoids any nutritional spikes, and helps the body maintain its optimum blood serum levels of nutrients.
Taste and texture
Ok, so I know the Fori bars look a bit strange, don’t worry about it – it’s all about the nutrition and taste of these things!
If the superior nutritional profiles isn’t enough for you to put down your sugar coated whey bar, then the taste will. The flavours are great, and the minted lamb does actually taste like minted lamb with a hint of apricots – delicious! My only niggle is perhaps there was a little too much smoky flavour in the smoky beef – I’d put this down to personal preference though.
The bars are also a little dry, but this is to be expected and it’s nothing compared to some of the other protein bars I’ve tried. This is me just nit picking though – they really are tasty. They aren’t chewy, and they are all very easy to eat.
Finally, after eating the bars I didn’t get that feeling of being over-fed that I get with other protein bars. I felt full, but not stuffed, which is what I want out of this kind of bar.
Price
The price of Fori bars are pretty competitive, especially when you consider they are made from high quality meats and nuts. You can currently pick up the bars for £2.10 each from the Fori website if you buy a pack of 12.
Summary
A Fori bar is a nutritionally balanced high protein savoury snack. Having a Fori bar is the same as eating some seasoned meat with a handful nuts/ fruit, which makes it the perfect snack for anyone conscious about their health. For anyone following the paleo movement, or just looking for a natural nutritional alternative to protein bars, then this hits the mark.
