So it’s 11pm and I’m sitting on my behind for the 4th hour in a row nomming on these CLIF organic trail mix bars. They’re THAT good. When I was notified that I would be receiving some samples from CLIF, I waited by my front door and jumped whenever the door bell rang. UPS probably has some sort of warning attached to my account for their drivers.
CLIF bars have been my go to since forever for quick and easy energy. Whenever I go on a long duration bike ride or a multi-day camping trip, I throw a couple of bars into my backpack along with some fruit and jerky then I’m good to go in the sustenance department. However, the ones that I used to pack were the original CLIF bars. With those bars, I reached the point of taste exhaustion pretty quickly because they’re kind of dense and really sweet. I find these organic trail mix bars to be much more preferable to my palate.
What I love about these bars:
– TASTE. Flavours are novel and delicious.
– 4/5 flavours were chocolate meaning they had both chocolate chunks and were dipped in chocolate. Ie. heaven!
– 3g of fibre in one 40g bar
– the first ingredients are usually nuts and dried fruit (NOT some sort of modified sugar syrup), which means that CLIF did everything to pack their bars with goodness and wholesome ingredients
– and for those of you with dietary restrictions, these bars are gluten free, vegan and organic!
How are these different from the Original CLIF bars:
– way higher in fat | 13g FAT/40g vs. 5g FAT/68g
– have less carbs | 19g CHO/40g vs. 44g CHO/68g
– way more fibre | 3g fibre/40g vs. 4g fibre/68g
Adjustments that I would make if I’m packing for an outdoor trip is to bring more of these bars or bring another CHO source. If I’m doing some intense endurance exercise though, I would not use these bars for fuel simply because they’re so high in fat and fibre.
There are 5 flavours and you can get them pretty much anywhere at most major grocery stores and natural food stores. Here is my narrative on the three flavours that I liked best:
Dark Chocolate Cherry Almond: mild cherry flavour from real dried cherries. Does not taste like cough syrup, thank god!
Dark Chocolate Pomegranate Raspberry: prominent raspberry flavour, good quality dark chocolate, but rice crisps/roasted soybeans get stuck in my teeth.
Dark Chocolate Almond Sea Salt: light salt flavour which I was hoping for because I find that most companies have a really heavy hand with adding salt to sweets
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I had no idea what I wanted to do for the photos but I wanted it to capture epic sports performance. SoooOooOoOo, I kinda tricked my friend into modelling for these pictures. He was not pleased but he complied 😀
Photos by my friend, Jason Tam Photography
Disclaimer: CLIF Bar sent me sample products for review but opinions of the products are completely my own.