With children home from school, parents need easy, satisfying, and healthy snacks.
Parents might think snack bars sold for kids are more nutritious than cookies, but are they really?
Consumer Reports chewed on those claims to reveal the truth.
Kids’ snack bars might seem like the perfect option for smaller appetites— they go anywhere and can live at the bottom of their backpacks for days.
The average kids’ bar is about 1 ounce and 115 calories, compared with just over 2 ounces and 210 calories for the adult bars.
But do they deliver the nutritional boost your kids need?
Consumer Reports nutrition experts examined 17 popular kids’ snack bars to determine which are truly healthy snacks and which are just dressed up in healthy-looking packages.
Some were “just” OK. Take Earth’s Best Organic Sunny Days Strawberry Snack Bar: It has very few whole grains and a lot of added sugars for a very small bar.
The first ingredient of Larabar Bakes Kids Chocolate Chip Cookie Bar is buckwheat, a whole grain, but of the 17 CR tried, it’s also the bar with the most added sugars.
Ideally, you want to look for a bar that’s made with oats or another whole grain and contains few processed ingredients.
When you look at the ingredients list, the more you recognize, the more likely the bar will be healthier.
For example, Cerebelly Smart Bars, Organic Sweet Potato Blueberry Banana, is made with dates, oats, sweet potato, sunflower seed butter, and pumpkin seeds and has no added sugars.
If chocolate is your kid’s thing, they might like the Junkless Chewy Chocolate Chip Granola Bar. It’s made with whole-grain oats, and while it might have a bit more sugar than other bars CR looked at, it has a fairly simple ingredients list.
You can even make your own because there are a lot of easy recipes online that you can customize the ingredients and the amount of sugar you use.
If you don’t want to bake, your kids can help make some trail mix using their favorite whole grain cereal, dried fruit, and nuts. Just add a scoop of the trail mix to a single-serve baggie so you’re ready the next time those little tummies rumble.
And there’s no reason to stick with kid-specific bars for your little one.
Depending on your kiddo’s calorie needs, consider breaking an adult bar in half. CR nutritionists recommend Jonesbar PB and J bar and Kind Healthy Grains Oats & Honey with Toasted Coconut.