Cereal bars

zervi2003

ok,
As ye might have seen from my previous posts, I am trying to loose about half a stone in weight.

Have been trying to eat sensibly-no diet as such, just cutting out real crappy food, and going to the gym.

So my question is, in the mornings, sometimes im on the run and have a bit of a distance to drive so on my way out in a petrol station I pick up a small tropicana orange juice and a special K cereal bar.

Does anyone know if these bars are ok? Are they full of sugar? Are they being promoted as healthy bars but are indeed full of crap? They do taste quite sweet. I dont know much about nutritional info on the back of stuff.

Doesnt fill me up really but does the job for a few hours. I have tried eating fruit (banana, apple etc) and it doesnt fill me up (and gives me the squids-not good if youre driving!)

Mr E

I have a special K bar here...

Protein: 2g
Carbs: 17g (9g sugar, 7g starch)
Fat: 2g (1g saturated)

It ain't gonna kill ya (but it won't fill you up either).

dudara

Peanuts make a great snack. They're full of protein and fairly low on carbohydrate and I find that a handful or so fills me up when I'm hungry.

Tesco sell a 1kg value bag of peanuts for E2, so quite cheap as well to buy in bulk. The nutritional information is as follows per 100g
Energy 600 kcal
Protein 29.0g
Carb 8.6g
Fat 50g (but these are mainly good fats)

Personally I don't touch those bars, because they contain sugar, and also because they're far too expensive for what they contain

Stark

Yeah they're full of sugar, no good. For a great snack I tend to go for the big bags of almonds in Nature's Way (they were doing a special price on 500g bags last time I was in there). It'll cost about €3.50 but will last you ages as a small handful will fill you up big time (I personally find peanuts don't fill me up).

For complex carbohydrate snack when I'm stuck I tend to go for popcorn (unsalted if possible).

zervi2003

Thanks for the replies.

But I dunno what all that nutritional info means.

ok, right, I know that carbs are not especially supposed to be good for you, or rather too much carbs, that they bulk you up etc.

So 17g of carbohydrate in a little bar seems alot no? How much should a person eat a day?

As for the peanuts, I thought they were supposed to contain all these fats that are bad for you (love peanuts though).

Stark

Type of carbohydrate is important. Sugar should be avoided like the plague. Starch is better, especially if it's mixed with some fibre. A good indicator of carbohydrate needs is hunger. If you feel hungry an hour or two after a meal then you're probably eating too much carbohydrate in that meal. Try adding protein/fibre (if you have potatoes, leave the skins on. if you have pasta etc. try wholewheat version).

Avoid energy bars that taste sweet unless you're sure the sweetener isn't sugar (they disguise this on the label, watch out for glucose syrup, corn syrup, maltodextrin etc.) or aspartame(nutrisweet).