I really didn’t expect Vega Whole Food Vibrancy Bars to be that insanely delicious!

I’ve eaten many natural protein bars, and some are much better than others. In fact, I reviewed a few that I quite liked here: Healthy and tasty protein bars

The new Vega Whole Food Vibrancy Bars are incredible. Not only are you getting 9 grams of protein (which represents 18 per cent of your daily requirements), you are also getting a bar made from loads of raw foods!

The bars come in three flavours: Green Synergy, Nutritive Original and Chocolate Decadence. My favourite by far is the Chocolate Decadence. It not only tastes great (and I’m not really a huge chocolate fan), it also provides you with the antioxidant benefits from 70 per cent cocoa (dark chocolate)!

Each Vega Whole Food Vibrancy Bar is a unique, delicious blend of all-natural, raw, organic  and enzymatically-active plant-based super foods including sprouted buckwheat, sprouted almonds, acai, Salba and hemp seeds.

In my opinion, Vega Whole Food Vibrancy Bars are the type of snack you should eat more often because the list of ingredients is as close to clean eating as you’ll ever find. Here are the ingredients from a Chocolate Decadence Vega Whole Food Vibrancy Bar:

Sprouted buckwheat*, dates*, hemp seed*, sprouted almonds*, agave nectar*, brown rice protein*, pea protein, dark chocolate* (70% cocoa mass*, raw sugar*, cocoa butter*), Vega Antioxidant EFA Oil Blend* (hemp seed oil*, flax seed oil*, green tea seed oil*, pomegranate seed oil*, black cumin seed oil*, black raspberry seed oil*, blueberry seed oil*, cranberry seed oil*, pumpkin seed oil*, coconut oil*, Salba*, acai*, chardonnay grape, sorghum puffs*.

All the ingredients with a star are organic!

Perhaps Vega Whole Food Vibrancy Bars are a little pricey at $2.99 apiece, but if you want a perfect, healthy snack that will provide your body with all the nutrients it needs, this is the one for you!

>>> Find out more about this healthy snack here: Vega Whole Food Vibrancy Bar

© All copyrights reserved to http://www.eatsmartagesmart.com in all countries.

>>>> If you’re viewing this healthy eating or healthy living tip as part of an aggregated content stream from different sites, or as a re-blogged post, please check out the content on the original Web site at www.EatSmartAgeSmart.com

My popcorn history is a long dry road to finding the perfect popcorn!

I’ve always loved popcorn and stopped eating it a long time ago, but now I’m making up for lost time.

You see, I stopped eating movie popcorn a long time ago since learning what kind of oil they cook their popcorn in. I’ve tried making stove pop popcorn at home from scratch, but it just never really tasted like much because it’s hard to coat dry popcorn with butter and salt.  I bought a popcorn machine to make the air cooked popcorn, but it tasted like air. I’ve also gone to those franchise stores that sell popcorn, but I never know what they put in their popcorn and it’s quite pricey. I’ve perused the aisle of my grocery store and either found popcorn with a lot of crap ingredients or healthy popcorn that was quite frankly not very tasty.

One day, as I was stopped by Whole Foods to pick a few things (I still cannot justify being a week’s worth of grocery there), I saw these towers of red bags and there were a few tasting bowls. I first tried a few kernels with a lot of hesitation and as I was chewing, I realized that these were quite good. I attempted to eat a few more and thought ‘”Wow!”

I grabbed a bag and asked the cashier for the price and when she declared $5 (I’m sure it’s much cheaper in the US), I dropped the bag like it was hot and said “that’s a bit pricey for my taste”.

A few months later, I was doing my grocery shopping at my usual store when I saw the tower of red bags with an amazing price of $3! I quickly grabbed a bag and ran to the cash.

When I opened the bag of Popcorn Indiana (the first time I tried it I bought the sea salt flavor), I ended up eating three small bowls in one sitting and could NOT believe how good they were.

I’m no calorie counter, but when I did turn the bag and read the calorie count, I also died of laughter because two cups of this super-yummy popcorn were ONLY 130 calories!!!

The wonderful thing about this popcorn is that it’s made of 100 per cent whole grain which means that after two cups I felt full and very happy.

Popcorn Indiana was voted ‘Best Snack’ in 2008 by Shape magazine and I’ll go one step further and say it’s the best snack of this decade!!!

Popcorn Indiana is proof that making good food choices can be easy and quite tasty!

I don’t have to spell out that Popcorn Indiana is a staple in my snack pantry!

OVERALL RATING:

There is nothing quite like home-baked cookies to cheer you up (don’t you think?).

The smell and the anticipation of those warm, chewy and sugary treats is enough to put a smile on anyone’s face.

I’m not much of a baker, okay, I’m lying, I REALLY don’t enjoy baking as much as cooking. Baking requires you to be very precise and you cannot just substitute one ingredient for another on a whim, you actually have to follow the instructions to the letter. I’m more of a carefree spirit in the kitchen and never hesitate to change things up. That might work well for cooking, but that spells disaster when it comes to baking.

That’s why I like finding people who are passionate about baking and eat without reserve what they have to offer.

I’ll make the occasional cookie, but if you’re baking for one or two, you may end up with a whole lot of cookies to eat.

If you comb the shelves at the grocery store, you’ll find loads of cookies that have such a long list on unpronounceable ingredients and loaded with saturated fat (that’s a major turn off for me).

When it comes to finding “healthy” cookies in the natural health section of your grocery store or at your local natural health food store, you are faced with a selection of tasteless and hard cookies (trust me, I’ve put pretty much all of them to the test and I end up running to Whole Foods Market to buy their freshly baked cookies … you know the large ones that come in flavours that melt in your mouth). That said, each Whole Foods Market cookie is $1.29 with tax (it’s $0.99 before tax). At that rate, it makes for expensive cookies not to mention that I have to run to the store every time I’m in the mood for cookies.

I cannot tell you how delighted I was when I discovered New Moon Kitchen cookies! These cookies are simply delectable and they come in a variety of healthy selections.

The list of ingredients read like something you’d make at home, but these little treats are conveniently packaged and ready to be eaten whenever you are in the mood.

Now, before you say “healthy cookies … puke”, I say test them before even making that erroneous conclusion. There is NOTHING tasteless about these cookies. They are delicious, moist and truly addictive.

I have always like ginger snaps, but some of them are so hard you’re always concerned about losing a tooth.  When I tasted the New Moon Kitchen Ginger Snappers, I realized that I had been misled in believing that ginger snaps are always hard as a rock. The New Moon Kitchen Ginger Snappers are a revelation because they are so moist and bursting with spices and ginger (and I’m not talking about powdered ginger … I’m talking about fresh ginger!!!).

The Mokas are equally decadent. We’re talking about a cookie made with organic espresso, chocolate and spicy cinnamon … I bet you won’t be able to eat a plain old chocolate chip cookie at those. That said, if espresso is not your thing, you can also choose the traditional ‘Chocolate Chip’ New Moon Kitchen cookies which are made with spelt flour instead of wheat flour.

‘Bite Me!’ is another one of those delicious cookies you’ll find yourself turning to at tea time. We’re talking about an oatmeal cookie made with sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and raisins!

New Moon Kitchen also bakes the following delicious choices: ‘MoMints’ (chocolate mint cookies) and ‘Goldies’ which is a traditional oatmeal cookie.

New Moon Kitchen is proudly Canadian, so I’m not sure if U.S. readers will find these cookies in their city, but I can assure you that with a little bit of research, you will be able to find a delicious AND healthy option in your city. New Moon Kitchen cookies are sold at a number health food markets and you’ll also find them at Whole Foods Market.

If you haven’t located New Moon Kitchen in your neck of the woods, you might want to check out their Web site and get in touch with them: New Moon Kitchen

OVERALL RATING:

I had stopped eating energy bars because the aftertaste often made me sick and when you read the list of ingredients of most bars you realize they are filled with ingredients you really don’t want to put into my body like: high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils and artificial flavors.

For a long while I just ate more nuts when I needed a boost of protein mid-morning or before going to the gym.

I’ve recently found a number of protein bars that are healthy and tasty. I’ve even found a few that could be entirely customized to your taste buds or nutritional needs.

Thanks to these new finds, I’ve been able to go back to eating protein bars because I’ll tell you that travelling with one of those is so practical and I never hesitate to grab one when I have an early morning meeting that prevents me from taking the time to eat a proper breakfast.

That said, in your quest to eating well, you really have to take the time to read the labels on your protein bars because that reality is (just as it is the case with food) protein bars aren’t created equally at all.

Here are the 5 protein bars I eat on a regular base:

1) Lara Bars: These bars are manufactured in Denver, Colorado. I started eating Lara Bars as a substitute to those conventional protein bars that have a terrible aftertaste. It took me only one bar to be hooked. I LOVE Lara Bars so much and after trying all of them, I can safely say that their Cherry Pie and Cashew Cookie flavours are by far my favourites.

Reading the list of ingredients of a Lara Bar is a five-second affair because there are very few ingredients. My Cashew Cookie bars contain (are you ready?): cashews and dates! That’s it! Only two ingredients were used for this bar.

Now, the Lara Bars don’t contain some of the other ingredients that you’ll find in the other bars listed here, but if you are on the run and hunger strikes, I find a bite of a Lara Bar to be the ideal solution.

I love Lara Bars so much that I usually always travel with one or two to hold me when I’m about running around the city I’m in!

2) Genuine Health Proteins+ Express: Genuine Health is a Canadian company and it must be one of my favourite food supplement company on the planet. I cannot tell you how I love a lot of their products because it’s always about quality first and foremost with them.

A few months ago, I was sent their new protein bar and I was not too keen on trying them because a) it was chocolate flavoured and I don’t like milk chocolate at all (please do not send me emails saying that I’ve lost my marbles … I know it’s weird to hear a woman say that, but I really do NOT like milk chocolate; b) I saw the words “weight loss support” and I immediately thought of tasteless and boring food. Given this was Genuine Health, I decided to trust everything I know about them. It took me one bite to realize there is nothing boring about these Genuine Health Proteins+ Express bars. To the satisfaction of many readers, I’ll even say that I quite enjoyed the chocolate flavour.

I have to admit, this is another winner for Genuine Health!

3) You Bars: YouBars.com is a company that allows you to create your own energy bars and bypass a lot of the really bad ingredients and high sugar content found in most commercial energy bars.

The company is the brain child of a frustrated mother-and-son team who were simply not satisfied with the limited selections offered in most stores.

You Bars allows you to choose the base, protein powders, nuts and seeds, fruits and berries, sweeteners, seasonings, grains and infusions of your bars. The company can even accommodate special requests such as organic ingredients or “extra crunchy” on demand!

Here again, you can bypass the custom part, by going straight to the “popular bar” page and you can get a bar that someone else created that appeals to you. You can choose from popular favourites like “breakfast bar”, “honey cashew” or “date with chocolate”.

Celebrity factor

YouBars has quite the following of celebrities who swear by their products.

Hollywood celebs such as Randy Jackson (”American Idol”), Fergie, Cloris Leachman (oldest contestant on “Dancing with the Stars”), Rex Lee (”Entourage”), Jason Priestley (original “90210″) and the USA Men’s Water Polo Winners, to name a few, are all big fans of these healthy snacks!

You’ll find more information on how you can order your own customizable energy bars here: YouBars

The ElementBars and YouBars both make for healthier snacks that will help keep your weight in check because the quality of ingredients is far superior to most of comparable commercial bars.

4) Element Bars: ElementBars.com based in Chicago and YouBar based in Los Angeles are two companies at the forefront of the customizable bar industry.

Element Bars only use all-natural ingredients and their bars contain no artificial sweeteners, processed starches or new food technology. The site is so easy to use and navigate and you can quickly and effortlessly create your own energy bar combination. You get to choose from ingredients like soynuts, apricots, dried blueberries, dried cherries, cashews, dried prunes, omega-3 and many more to create the perfect energy bar.

You don’t even have to worry if you make a mistake in the food combination while creating your bar because the site warns you if you’ve selected incompatible ingredients, and it will even recommend a mix for users who answer a few lifestyle-oriented questions. After trying their bars, users can rate and comment on their creations, as well as sharing them with their friends for voting or further customization.

Each bar costs $3USD and popular bars are sold for a discounted price of $2.50 per bar.

You’ll find more information on how you can order your own customizable energy bars here: ElementBars

There are so many combinations you can create with Element Bars … I’m sure you’ll find one you love!

5) Vega Bars: I also tried the Vega Complete Whole Food Meal Replacement bars and unlike most protein bars that make me sick because of their aftertaste, the Vega bars were very tasty.

Until doing research on the product I had no idea most other bars on the market used processed and cooked ingredients in their formulation. Vega bars are 100 per cent raw foods and they require less energy to digest and provide a greater net energy gain to your body.

Vega bars do have a taste that is quite their own and it’s due to the Maca that they use. MacaSure (aka organic gelatinized maca) is rich in alkaloids, glucosinolates, minerals and sterols. Maca increases energy levels, reduces stress, balances hormones and improves libido. The gelatinization process enhances potency and the ease of digestion/absorption of the maca in your body.

As a result, it might take you a few tries before you fully enjoy your Vega bars, but it’s so worth it!