Clif C Bar – A whole foods energy bar

An unexpected bonus of hosting the Land of Nutrition at this year’s Walk MS events was discovering a new product from Clif Bar Energy bars: The Clif C Bar.

The Clif C Bar is a different sort of portable food sporting a double layer of fruit and nuts and made from a handful of recognizable ingredients – basically fruit, nuts and sea salt. The bars are lightly baked and then sprinkled with nuts and a hint of sea salt to make the flavors dance.

Let me repeat my criteria for choosing a healthy granola/power/energy-type bar:

1. I want all ingredients to recognizably come from nature. The less processed these are, the better. I want to be able to pronounce and identify everything listed.

2. The fewer ingredients, the better. Don’t junk up my snack bars with a lot of extra stuff. Don’t add MSG or gluten fillers to my granola bars. Don’t add protein where it doesn’t occur naturally. And, please, don’t give me “artificial flavors,” because synthetic flavors are a huge turn-off to my taste buds.

These C-Bars are bursting with flavor– real flavors, not “natural or artificial flavors” concocted in a laboratory tube. They’re not so dense that they sit heavily in your stomach like so many other power bars.

Here’s an example of the ingredients in the apple Clif C-bar: Organic Dates, Almonds, Organic Apples, Macadamia Nuts, Organic Apple Juice Concentrate, Organic Lemon Juice Concentrate, Organic Cinnamon, Sea Salt (Real Salt®), Natural Vitamin E (Antioxidant).

Mmmmm… look at all of those yummy real foods!

Best of all, perhaps, is how friendly the C-Bars are to those with food allergies and/or food sensitivities. You won’t find any wheat, gluten, corn, eggs, dairy, etc., etc., etc. in these beauties.

My only problem with these bars is that they are soft and can get smooshed beyond recognition when tossed into a crowded purse during an outing. Then you basically have to lick the bar off of the wrapper to eat it, not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it can get sticky.

Be sure to try all the flavors of Clif C-Bars: apple, blueberry, rasperry, cherry pomegranate (our favorite!). Thanks to Alex over at Clif Bars for the free samples he gave out at the MS Walks!