Protein Bars

With this pregnancy, I have been trying to be much more mindful of getting lots of protein in. During pregnancy a woman should have at least 60 grams of protein. I like to spead it out through out the day if I can. I read label after label of all the "protein" bars. I must have looked ridiculous as I stood in Wal-Mart reading labels in the pharmacy section where they keep the protein bars. Of course there are all kinds of bars available with tons of protein. I actually took one to show DH which was like a snickers bar that had something like 30 grams of protein. In the end I just couldn't bring myself to buy them because of the huge list of ingredients, most of them I couldn't even identify. What is soy protein isolate anyway?!? Then I tried buying some Kashi bars but they weren't really any different, maybe a smidge better. Then DH suggested I try the protein bar aisle at our grocery store. There I saw Larabars for the first time. I remembered bookmarking a page on my computer that mentioned them so I thought I would check them out. They don't boast the huge protein content that the others do, at a relatively low 6 or 7 grams of protein but when I looked at the ingredients list I decided to be brave enough to give them a try. The first one I tried was the Peanut Butter Cookie bar. The ingredients were: Dates, peanuts and salt. WOW! Three things. But would I like dates???  I actually did. Now DH and B#4 absolutely did not like them. But that's okay, the other kiddos did. Not that I plan on feeding them to the whole tribe at $1.32/bar. I have a hard time spending that on me so I decided it couldn't be that hard to make from scratch.

Enter Google. Need a recipe, go to Google. Turns out lots of people are making them from scratch. If you are interested in trying your hand at it you can find the recipe I used HERE. B#2 and I just love them and they were really easy to make and while dates in and of themselves don't have much to recommend them in the nutrition department, aside from calcium and magnesium, they do a good job of substituting sugar and giving these bars something to hold them together. I would say the protein in these "protein bars" comes from the nuts that you add in. When I made them I used almonds because that was what I had on hand. I also added chocolate chips because you can never go wrong with chocolate chips!

I would love to hear if you have ever tried Larabars and if so what you thought of them.