Las protein bars they are available to everyone. You can find them in the supermarket, near checkouts so you don’t miss seeing them, in online stores like Amazon, in gyms, in sports supplement stores… and even in pharmacies. What flavour is it? Of those you can imagine: white, dark or milk chocolate, biscuit, cheesecake or peanut butter flavor… and even the best-known brands of chocolate bars such as M&M, Snickers, Bounty or Mars. Promising ads everywhere: they give you protein, energy, and some even claim to help you lose weight and burn fat. There are also videos on social networks of influencers tasting them and alluding to how good they are… But Are they really necessary? And healthy?
Francis Bottle, coordinator of the nutrition area of the Spanish Society of Endocrinology and Nutrition (SEEN), explains that protein bars are unnecessary. “People who eat healthy, for example, those who eat a Mediterranean diet, do not need to supplement.” Proteins can be found in various foods such as legumes, nuts, meat, fish, dairy products or eggs, he points out. “If a patient tells me that he consumes this type of product, he would tell him that there are much more beneficial natural protein sources… The best quality is in the egg white and in the albumin of the milk”.
Proteins are one of the basic nutrients in food at any age. “They make up the entire body: skin, hair, bones, muscles… practically our entire body is made of protein“, indicates Botella. Proteins are continuously forming and degrading, so we need to incorporate them into our diet to replace those that are degrading. The doctor adds that an adult should take a little less than 1 gram for each kilo that they weigh per day, 0.8 grams is the ration indicated by the WHO. The amounts change depending on the existence of a pathology or a specific situation, such as pregnancies: “The range is between a minimum of 0.8 and a maximum of 1.5 grams for the vast majority of the population,” says the SEEN spokesman.
“We assume that we eat very badly. So the food industry offers us these apparent solutions, those foods that they call functional.” Is it necessary to take protein bars? “Obviously not”, says Bottle. He explains that a poor diet is not improved by these products: “Society needs nutritional education, not bars.” “Companies are taking advantage of the bad habits of the population to sell them these products as something necessary when they are not, there are many commercial interests and this moves a lot of money,” she says.
Ok, they are not necessary, but what about healthy? There are different types: there are more or less sugar, some even with 20 grams per unit and not very beneficial fats. When buying one, you should look at its ingredients to find out why it is formed, and thus know if it can be healthy or not. “Less than a quarter of people look at the ingredients on the labels of the products they are buying, so many people don’t know what they are eating.” comments the nutritionist. To which he points: “A protein bar loses much of its nutritional interest if it is accompanied by added sugars or unhealthy fats… They become a ultra-processed and, therefore, these would not be recommended”.