Are protein bars healthy? According to many fitness companies, the answer is yes. The bars are supposed to provide us with high-quality protein and other important substances to perfectly enjoy casino lightning roulette. Find out here whether there is anything to these promises.
Protein bars are part of everyday life for many sports enthusiasts. Protein bars seem to be the perfect snack, especially if you do weight training and want to build muscle and promote your body’s regeneration. But how healthy a bar is depends first and foremost on the ingredients it contains. The question also arises as to whether protein bars are really necessary for a balanced diet.
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ARE PROTEIN BARS NECESSARY?
Proteins are vital building blocks of our body that we need to consume every day through our diet. According to experts, proteins play a key role in muscle building and act as enzymes to ensure that numerous metabolic processes can take place in the body. Adults up to the age of 65 have a daily protein requirement of 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. For a person weighing 70 kilograms, this would correspond to 56 grams of protein per day.
You can achieve this value, for example, if you eat 100 grams of oatmeal, 300 milliliters of soy milk, 200 grams of tofu, 100 grams of chickpeas, and two slices of wholemeal bread throughout the day.
In addition, fitness companies repeatedly advertise that protein requirements are increased if you exercise regularly. Protein bars are of course particularly useful for increasing your daily protein intake. However, this statement is also not in line with scientific findings. According to Stiftung Warentest, the protein requirement is only increased in competitive athletes. Even if you train five times a week for 30 minutes at a time, you don’t need to consume more protein.
ARE PROTEIN BARS HEALTHY?
Whether a protein bar is healthy depends primarily on its composition. This varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. However, many conventional protein bars contain high amounts of sugar as well as glucose syrup, fructose syrup, or inverted sugar syrup. They are therefore more like a sweet than a healthy snack.
Some protein bars are also sugar-free and sweetened with sweeteners or sugar substitutes (such as xylitol or erythritol). Exactly how these substances affect our bodies has not yet been conclusively clarified. However, according to experts, sweeteners in particular are associated with several negative health effects: they upset our feelings of satiety and hunger and are suspected of altering our intestinal flora and even our brain activity. There is no such evidence to date for sugar substitutes. However, they can cause gastrointestinal complaints from as little as ten to 20 grams.
In addition, protein bars often contain added vitamins and minerals. This is also problematic – because people who eat a lot of protein bars and similar products every day can easily consume too high a dose of various nutrients. This can lead to health problems in the long term.