A big part of building muscle at the gym is ensuring you eat enough protein. Not only does protein help you to build your muscles, it will also help you recover quicker by helping to repair your muscles. Protein is also harder for your body to break down, so high protein foods will leave you feeling fuller for longer, and thus help you maintain a healthy and balanced diet and ensure that your energy levels are consistent throughout the day. The downside of being vegan though is that, despite all the information out there about protein, people are always very concerned about where us vegans get our protein from. Getting protein as a vegan is just as easy as it is for meat eaters. Case and point with this little bar.
Again, this was given to me by a work colleague, who in turn got it from her gym along with the nutrient stack and a few other non-vegan snacks. Luckily for me though as I am always on the look out for new and convenient protein products. When I had a quick look online about the brand, it again seems to be one of those bulk buy companies. These bars, for example, come in a pack of 12 for £20. They do offer different flavours though and also seem to offer a lot of protein powders and other health and fitness supplements.
This bar was very tasty. It was also very, very dense. One bar kept me full for the entire afternoon and even got me through a pretty intense leg work out – including a new personal best in my deadlift of 70kg! The bar is very tasty – the raspberries are a lovely tart addition and the dark chocolate is just bitter enough to balance out the raspberries. It was therefore not very sweet, so definitely no risk of sugar shock or a sickly feeling after this. The flavours balanced each other very nicely and made for a very nice snack after that post-lunch slump.
The only thing I would say is that it does have a very slightly grainy texture to it. Now I consume protein products more or less every day (be it in protein shakes before bed or via these sorts of bars after the gym) so I am used to this texture. I don’t find it off putting in anyway and I do not find that it affects the flavour or the product in anyway at all. I do however like to warn people because it can be a bit of a shock when you are first trying these products and don’t know what to expect.
The product as I saw is very dense, which I was not quire expecting. It was very similar to soft fudge in thickness, so again not what I would call a light snack. I would not recommend having this bar and then immediately going to work out (I would not recommend you work out immediately after eating anyway) but I think it worked brilliantly as a pre-gym snack to have a few hours before the workout so that you have all of the energy from the bar without any of the heaviness in your stomach. That being said, I am someone who much prefers to work out with a relatively empty stomach so I have never been the person who can have a massive fry up and then go for a 10km run. But every single body is different and I would highly recommend finding what works best for your body and for the fitness goals you have in mind.
As I mentioned above the price for these is £20 for a box of 12. If we split that down per bar, it’s roughly £1.60 per bar which is actually very cheap. I also feel that this is a product that you’re not meant to have every day, so having 12 for the whole month is more than enough. I feel this would be a very good little product to have after a very intense workout (such as a heavy lifting session or long distance run) but not really something you would want to eat everyday. It’s not very sweet, so it doesn’t taste like a sweet treat, plus the density of the bar means it isn’t the type of treat that you could have twice in one day.
Taylor Talks Vegan 