Granola Bars – The Good, Bad And Ugly
Snacking plays an important role in your diet. It can help keep the fires of your metabolism burning strong, keep you working out at your best and help you feel fuller so you don’t eat as much at your next meal. That doesn’t mean just any snack will do. You need a healthy snack that is lower in calories and provides many of the nutrients you need each day. Many people have found that granola bars are their go-to snacks. They’re portable and often quite delicious, but are they good for you? The answer is yes and no. It all depends on the granola bar and how many you consume.
The most popular ones aren’t necessarily the healthiest.
In order to find out whether a food is healthy, you have to read the label. Does it contain high amounts of saturated fat, over 20% of your daily allowance? Does it contain added sugar? Unfortunately, some of the most popular brands of granola bars were also ones that contained the most sugar and saturated fat. While some granola bars contain natural sugar from fruit, like date paste or natural applesauce for sweetening, others use unacceptable types of sweeteners, like cane sugar, honey, maple syrup or high fructose corn syrup.
How much protein, fiber and unsaturated fat does the granola bar contain?
Nuts and seeds can provide the unsaturated fat your body needs to be its healthiest. Just like protein and fiber, it helps keep you feeling full, while providing nutrients to your body. In order to be effective at that, your granola bar should contain at least five grams of each, fiber, unsaturated fat and protein. Check the label to see if your favorite does. Not only do nuts and seeds provide unsaturated fat, they also provide protein.
It’s hard to find granola bars without some type of added sugar.
If you’re reading labels faithfully, you’ll notice some companies don’t show how much added sugar in their nutritional facts. Very few bars are produced with little added sugar, which includes all sweeteners that don’t come from fruit. Most of the time raisin juice, raisins or date paste is used. Some companies sweeten their products with artificial sweeteners like xylitol and sorbitol, which can cause digestive upset. Like many highly processed foods, they may contain preservatives and artificial flavor.
- The American Heart Association suggests that consuming an average diet of 2,000 calories, 13 grams is all you should have. Any bar containing more than 2.6 grams contains more than 20% and isn’t as healthy as it should be.
- Some bars are created to be meal bars and aren’t meant to be snacks. Don’t treat them as such. They’re acceptable as a meal-on-the-fly, but are often far higher in calories. Some contain as many as 600+ calories.
- You can make your own granola bars and control the ingredients. Use oats, nuts, dates, nut butter and dried fruit. You need to pulse the dates in a food processor or use date paste and warm the nut butter before mixing it into the other ingredients.
- Don’t be fooled by the location of the granola bars. Even if you buy them from a health food store or the health food aisle of the grocery, always read the label to see just how healthy it is.
For more information, contact us today at Next Level Fitness
It’s two in the morning and suddenly, you find yourself unable to sleep and craving sweets. You go through the cupboard and refrigerator to find something, anything, to satisfy that urge. Finally, in desperation you throw a burrito shell on a hot buttered griddle, heat one side, flip it and sprinkle on cinnamon and sugar. Your urge is satisfied and you now can go to sleep. That’s not a story I made up, but one that a client at Next Level Fitness in Irvine, CA, told me. Together, we found the cause for that craving. It’s not just late at night that cravings come. You may find yourself snatching the last bit of candy from your child’s Easter Basket or stock up on sugary treats at the gas station.
If you’ve noticed, coconut water has become quite popular. One reason is that it’s touted as being quite healthy. Before we go into whether it’s really that good for you, you need to know what coconut water is. It’s actually not water, but the juice that comes from the coconut. When you combine that juice with freshly grated coconut, you get coconut milk. Many people use coconut water to replace sports drinks, since it contains natural amounts of electrolytes, such as calcium, potassium and sodium, but some people feel that plain water is just as good for rehydrating.
Each person has a different prime workout time. There’s no right or wrong time, since it’s based on your internal clock. Do you jump out of bed in the morning, ready to face the day, or are you constantly hitting the snooze button, finally dragging yourself out of bed? The most important thing you can do is simply start a workout program, even if you have to adjust the time later for a time that works better with your schedule and your body.
Even if you workout three times a week at Next Level Fitness in Irvine, CA, it’s still important to keep active when you aren’t at the gym. Studies show that even if you workout regularly, you’ll lose a lot of the benefit if you regularly sit for longer than an hour. If you have a desk job or are at the computer, take five minutes out of every hour to move. It can be something as simple as just getting up and walking around the room or even doing a simple exercise, like jogging in place. You’ll feel better, do your body a favor and be more alert to finish your mental work more quickly, since the movement stimulates blood flow.
What is your healthiest version of you? If you don’t know or haven’t experienced the healthiest you for a while, it’s time to make a change. You could look better, feel better and enjoy the benefits of good health and more energy by starting today. If you take your car to the mechanic for regular oil changes and other maintenance, are you treating your body as well as you do your vehicle? If the answer is no, then you have to ask, “why not?”
If you can’t get to the gym, time is at a minimum or you’re cooped up overnight at a hotel, running in place can be a viable alternative to a good workout that focuses on all types of exercise and the entire body. You can modify your in place running by doing high knee kicks, jump squats and butt kicks to make it even more effective. Best of all, it’s good for those times when you’re at the breaking point and need to get rid of stress or simply have been sitting for long periods and need a little break.
Here in Irvine, CA, people are focused on staying healthy during the spread of the virus. We agree that managing your health during a pandemic is important, but also feel that it should be part of your life at all times. There are facts that are known about this particular virus that should make everyone take notice of their own health. Of course, age is a big factor and you can’t control your chronological age, but you can have an effect on your biological age. What’s the difference? One is how long you’ve been on the earth—chronological—and the other—biological age—is the impact your lifestyle and genetics plays on the damage and death of cells that causes the body to show signs of aging.
You don’t have to eat cardboard flavored biscuits to get healthy, there health benefits from eating dark chocolate. That’s right! Chocolate can be good for you. However, you must remember that the amount you eat and the type of chocolate makes a difference. Not all chocolate is created equally and the healthy kind is the dark chocolate. It has less or no milk added and far less sugar. Less milk means less interference with the absorption of the polyphenols found in the cocoa bean and more of it. Dark chocolate also has a better healthy fat profile.
If you feel shaky after a workout, you might be concerned that something is wrong with you. In most cases, there’s no need for concern. It’s quite normal and can happen for a number of reasons. Even though most of those reasons shouldn’t alarm you needlessly, there’s no reason to ignore ones that indicate a more serious problem. Learning the common causes is important and can help you avoid the shakiness. When you feel shaky, note any other symptoms that occur at the same time.