The idea is simple. Many people don't have the time to cook a healthy meal each time they need it. So they rather refer to ready made protein bars and pretend, they're doing something good for their body in terms of nutrition. By all good means, this is not entirely true.
The protein bars you can buy at your local supermarket are not as healthy, as they look, and if you go for the "pro" versions your gym offers you, one bar alone is very expensive. So Scooby1961 showed you, how it's done at home - no cooking or cutting involved, just mix things up
In short, here's the list of ingredients he put in a bowl:
- 400g Protein powder (the good stuff, 100% natural whey protein)
- 200g organic rolled oats
- 250ml fat-free milk (very hard to get in Germany)
- 100g natural peanut butter (again, the good stuff, made entirely of peanuts)
- 30g cocoa powder (for the yummy)
- a bit of organic ground flax to finish it off.
Now as a fitness amateur you probably already have most of the things at home. Put them together in the bowl and what you see in front of you costs around...
- Protein powder: 8.45 EUR
- Peanut butter: 0.60 EUR
- Oats: 0.90 EUR
- Milk: 0.12 EUR
- Honey: 0.80 EUR
Total: 10,87 EUR
The cocoa powder and flax add a tiny sum, so let's make it 11 EUR.
This is roughly estimated since I had most of the ingredients at home and didn't keep the prices in mind. It may vary a few cent. But nonetheless you get around 1kg of highly concentrated energy-stuff which comes for close to 1 EUR per 100g, that's 35 cent per protein bar.
If you buy one at your local supermarket it'll cost you at least 50cent, often more.
Now have a look at the nutrition values per 35g chunk (our bar vs the industrial one you buy in a rush):
- calories 152 - 135
- protein 21g - 11g
- carbs 12g - 15 (where 10 of those are just sugar)
That's a whola lotta bang for your buck. Of course the industrial values have to be that bad, considering their ingredients: amongst others there's glucose (that's just sugar), fructose (again, sugar) and the choclate covering (which of course is made of sugar).
Now obviously there are no vitamins, the amount of fiber is poor and it doesn't replace a complete healthy meal but it is a pretty good, healthy and most of all practical substitute when you're in a hurry and it is definitely way better than anything you could grab on your way to the next train.
Of course I wouldn't write this if I hadn't made any of those myself, here's the, erm, result:
I had to vary the recipe a little bit since I couldn't get my hands on any flax, and to makes things worse, I chose to use the easily soluble oats because I already had them at home... not so good, stick with the original. They soak up the milk pretty fast and will make the mixture even more gooey, in fact so much I couldn't get the last bar off of my fingers.
Plus, the result lacks a bit of a firm consistency so gravity got the better of my bars.
Nevertheless, they're surprisingly tasty and half of such a chunk really makes a full stomach.
Enjoy :)