Fit Fare

General Mills has developed a new snack bar - The Fiber One bar. The flavor I sampled was the Oats and Chocolate. There is also an Oats and Peanut Butter variety.

The taste was fine, if a bit sweet for my liking. Chewy with the occasional crunch and a typical cereal bar taste, the Fiber One bar is filled with chocolate chips and covered in a caramel drizzle.

The bar is 140 calories, which is probably fine but could be a bit high as a normal snack. It has a whopping 9 grams of fiber, which is 35% of the USDA recommended daily intake. What other good does it have to offer? Not that much: 2g of protein, 10% of your recommended daily allowance of calcium, and a measly 2% each of Vitamin A and iron. Better than your average candy bar? Perhaps, but that’s not saying much.

The biggest mystery to me is the very first ingredient: chicory root extract. I had no idea what that is for or why it is the first ingredient. I conducted a search to see what its purpose may be and all I found is that it is a probiotic.

In a pinch, if you’re on the road and need a snack, particularly if you don’t get much fiber in your diet, this will probably do, but with the amount of fat (4g total, 1.5g saturated) and sugar (10g), it’s probably not your best choice. High maltose corn syrup, fructose corn syrup and sugar make this bar a processed food candy bar fest.