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Vegetarian Snack/Energy/Granola Bar Roundtable Review

Last night I sat around two tables at a local fair trade coffee shop, Bridgehead, sampling different types of bars (raw, snack, energy, granola, dessert) for a review for National Capital Vegetarian Association (NCVA) newsletter. With great company and delicious experimentation, it was so much fun! I discovered that I don’t really intend on buying too many snack bars aside from those which are light tasting and with a small number of recognizable ingredients. This is why Lara bars have always been a staple for me - delicious raw snacks with simple compositions of under four ingredients of usually dates and nuts.

I used the opportunity to experiment more with my photography, enjoying the evidence of our experience. All of these images are available in larger sizes on my Flickr account (I withhold from creating links due to clunky flaws in my blog’s design).

Each bar was divided into bite-sized pieces. We did one round eating half and commenting on it, while a second round we ate the other half and gave more concrete comments and ratings on a ten point scale. I found it funny how several of us would forget and eat the entire piece. To keep track of the missing bar we would draw a little ‘x’ on the napkin.

The winner was surprisingly the Maple Nut bar, which I considered more of a dessert than true granola snack bar. But very delicious - I was still longing to smell the wrapper after we finished it off!

The wreckage after the testing, nestled between mugs of tea. My friend Diana drank a hibiscus tea, while I had lemon/spearmint - earlier before we met at the coffee shop I drank a lemon rooibos while reading. (I always combine two teas, always with lemongrass since I love the lemon flavour). We soon learned that tea was essential to ‘cleanse our palate’ between bars. It was so funny to dissect snack bars for gourmet subtleties!

After rigorous testing the author of the review for the newsletter tallys up our scores. This is my favourite photograph of all of them.

Lara bars rock! I first discovered them a little over 2 years ago in Vancouver. My faves are lemon, pistachio and cherry pie! They were basically my lunch for the entire summer. I was happy to find them in Ottawa last year.

Have you tried ‘original’ Bumble Bars? They’re another favourite of mine. Gluten-free goodness.

Yes we really enjoyed the Bumble Bars as well - I was especially happy to see that ironically they did not contain honey. And very light tasting - I hated the heavy feeling of some of the bars!

Definitely love Lara Bars and always have them around for camping trips and hunger lulls at work.

ooh, awesome, i’ve never tried maple nut (because it always lost out to chocolate almond or peanut butter crunch for me, yum) but i’ll have to some time.

i love cliff bars, so much oaty goodness.

the luna bars always taste kinda chemically and sugary to me, like, they remind me of some weird diet snack or something.

lara bars are of course so freaking delicious, but mannnn…soooo sweet. it’s like on the raw detox, they said to treat them like a candy bar. can definitely be a lifesaver sometimes though.

i am really a fan of the chocolate vega bars. they taste a bit, umm…”healthy”…but i think that’s because they probably ARE healthier! i don’t eat them often bc they’re freaking expensive, but they can make a great snack between work & the gym sometimes when i’ve run out of lunch.

The best bar ever is Equibar.