Description
Who says a snack bar has to spoil your best eating intentions with unhealthy sugars, soy, grains, and bio-engineered ingredients?
With many of today’s snack or so-called “energy” bars, there is a very fine line between them and what’s stocked in the confectionery aisle of your local supermarket. Looking at the top-selling snack bars, you find sweeteners like high-fructose corn syrup, cane syrup, and artificial sweeteners like aspartame. Some of the most popular bars contain total carb levels as high as 42 grams and 20 grams of sugars per bar! That’s not much different from the 35 grams of carbs and 29 grams of sugars found in the most popular chocolate bar!
Snack bars are here to stay. Convenient to pack along, they are ideal for a quick recharge squelching hunger pangs, and beating mid-afternoon fatigue.
It is common to use them as a dessert or reward in Dr Mercolas nutritional ketosis feast-famine-cycle eating regimen. Yet, we shouldn’t be willing to settle for tasteless high net-carb bars chock full of genetically modified ingredients.
8 Criteria for the Perfect Snack Bar
What makes the perfect snack bar? There are 8 criteria that have to be met:
- Low Sugar: Cannot contain refined sugar, artificial or corn-based sweeteners. Your body breaks down these sugars differently and their consumption is linked to insulin resistance, weight gain and disease.
- Lower in net carbs: Net carbohydrates are the total carbs in a product minus grams of fibre. For optimal health benefits, you want to focus on lower net carbs.
- Lower protein: Researchers are discovering that even moderate protein levels can activate your mTOR pathway which may have a detrimental effect on your health. Mercola now recommends eating a total each day, depending on your lean body mass, of only 30 to 70 grams of protein from all sources, including vegetables, and bars with high amounts of protein can easily put you over the top of what may be best for you.
- Good source of healthy fats: The calories from excess protein and carbohydrates should be replaced with calories from high-quality fats from foods like macadamia nuts, pecans, pumpkin seeds and coconut.
- High fibre: High levels of fibre are essential for health and for lowering net carbs. Ideal sources of fibre for bars include chia seeds, nuts, coconut, cassava and berries.
- Delicious homemade taste: No one enjoys a dry, tasteless bar. The perfect snack bar is moist, chewy and flavourful from whole foods, just like a snack you might prepare in your own kitchen using wholesome ingredients.
- Organic, non-genetically modified ingredients : Meets USDA organic standards and contains absolutely no bio-engineered ingredients (unlike what is found in most snack bars today).
- Gluten-free: The ideal bar must be gluten-free. Along with organic ingredients, this helps ensure your bar won’t contain traces of glycogen, a potent health-damaging pesticide applied to wheat before harvesting.
Introducing the Gourmet Cassava Snack Bars
These Cassava Bars are different from other snack bars. Made from at least 95 % organic, non-bio-engineered ingredients (meets USDA organic standards), they provide good sources of fibre and fat, and taste delicious because they are made with high-quality whole foods!
The Cassava snack bars contain:
- NO refined sugar
- NO artificial sweeteners
- NO bio-engineered ingredients
- NO soy-derived ingredients
- NO gluten or dairy
- Ingredients that are NOT farmed with pesticides, including glyphosate
The Cocoa Cassava Bars Are Now Even Better
If you haven’t yet discovered the Cocoa Cassava Bars, you are in for a real treat. Delicious and moist, they contain only wholesome ingredients like:
- Organic Cassava (also known as tapioca, yucca and manioc root) that provides a hint of sweetness and moisture. Used as a major staple food for many South American tribes since Pre-Columbian times, cassava also provides calcium.
- Organic coconut for a delicious tropical flair, while enhancing the texture and fibre content. The coconut’s medium shred preserves the delicate flavor and moistness from its natural organic oils. No sulfites or preservatives are ever added to my organic coconut!
- Organic raw chia seeds for nutrients, fibre and a delightful crunch!
- The exclusive mix of white and black chia seeds, as they exist in nature, are a low glycemic source of omega-3 fatty acids, insoluble and soluble fibre, magnesium, calcium and complete vegetable protein.
- Organic almond butter for a source of protein and high-quality fat for long-lasting energy and satisfying fullness. Almonds also contain antioxidants and beneficial phenols, flavonoids and phenolic acids.
- TWO sources of organic chocolate: 56 % cacao dark chocolate and raw cacao powder for free radical-fighting antioxidants. Chocolate contains the valuable micronutrients magnesium, zinc, iron and potassium as well as flavanols to support healthy brain function and mood. This raw cacao powder contains no alkalising agents or added synthetic sweeteners.
What Was Discovered During Cocoa Cassava Nutritional Ketosis Experiment
There was recently a surprising discovery about the Cocoa Cassava Bars. With Dr Mercola’s passion for improving mitochondrial function, it is clear most of us need to shift over to burning fat instead of glucose as our primary fuel. He was concerned that the 15 grams of net carbs in the regular Cocoa Cassava bars might be too high and so, stopped eating them. So his team challenged me to put him to the test. Here‚’s what happened-
Using a continuous glucose monitor that measures his blood sugar every five minutes, he measured the effects on his blood sugar while eating a Cocoa Cassava bar during his 1 to 2 hour post-meal walks. He was shocked to discover that the bars actually decreased his blood sugar from 5 to 30 points. Essentially, because Dr Mercola was able to burn fats effectively, his insulin levels were very low and this caused his liver to produce glucose. Eating the bars stopped the glucose production and thus lowered his blood sugar.
This effect only works if you have low insulin levels, so if you are not fat-adapted yet, it may be best to hold off on the Cocoa Cassava treats until you are. And even then it would be best not to eat them every day.
Dr Mercola was very excited to learn this as he no longer needed to be concerned about occasionally enjoying one of his favourite snacks.
The Organic Cocoa Cassava Bar with Coconut and Chia Seeds is:
- Made with organic whole food ingredients which meet USDA organic standards
- High in fibre and lower in net carbs
- Low in sugars – each bar contains only 5 or 6 grams sugars and no refined sugar or corn-based or artificial sweeteners
- Moderate in protein – not too much to push you over the top of what might be a healthy level for you
- Good source of healthy fats from coconut.
- Loaded with superfoods
- Ingredients organically farmed without bio-engineered ingredients, pesticides or glyphosate
- Free of dairy, soy and gluten
- Delicious and moist, with a chewy texture and pleasing flavor
- Quick and convenient for a busy lifestyle and handy for travel
- Available by the box or individual bar!
