Carman's Almond, Hazelnut & Vanilla Nut Bars
2 reviews
These nut bars taste ok for a snack food. Good for an afternoon snack on the odd occasion. Although it looks marketed as a healthy snack, I would classify it as confectionery. Each 35g bar has nuts and puffed rice glued together with glucose, brown rice syrup and additionally sweetened with honey. The label on the front says it has 5g of protein, but the nutritional panel says it has 6g. In any case, it’s only slightly higher than the sugar content, and not a level to boast about. You could simply eat a handful of nuts or have an egg if you’re after protein and skip the cane sugar. It could be better if they had more nuts than only 62% and if the gluey glucose coating was less prominent and sticky. Each bar is inside single use plastic which may be short term practical but I find unappealing and it would be good if they could have them wrapped in a biodegradable wrapping.
Sick as a dog after these. Brown Rice Syrup has one of the worst Glycaemic Indexes. Then there's the arsenic – I only ate these and Carman's Fruit and Nut Muesli yesterday. I have been isolating, and was feeling great. They are meant to be sulphite and gluten free. However, they are mostly peanuts and almonds. I have never felt so unwell after eating something. Not even McDonalds. The brown rice syrup is a terrible ingredient. The glucose is too. Ugh. Never again. Not to mention that if you just took a handful of nuts you'd be getting five times the value.
Here are some fun facts about Brown Rice Syrup:
1. It has a glycaemic index of 98 (extremely high). Table sugar is around 65. [1] 2. It contains these sugars: maltotriose (52%), maltose (45%), and glucose (3%). These act like pure glucose. [1] 3. It is likely to contain significant levels of arsenic. [2]
References:
1. Gunnars, K. (2019). Brown Rice Syrup: Good or Bad? [online] Healthline. Available at: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/brown-rice-syrup-good-or-bad.
2. Holtcamp, W. (2012). Suspect Sweetener: Arsenic Detected in Organic Brown Rice Syrup. Environmental Health Perspectives, [online] 120(5), p.a204. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3346801/ [Accessed 12 Mar. 2022].
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