Healthy Snack Bars – Six-Pack Snacks

As fabulous as sugar snap peas are, and my current six-pack snack of choice, there are times when they just won’t do; there are times when I JUST. NEED. MORE and healthy snack bars are the way forward.
A large bar of chocolate would fit the ‘MORE’ bill, or even a small one, just as long as it hits that sweet spot!
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, and I’ll try breaking it to you as gently as I can, but bars of chocolate, big or small, aren’t going to help you get into shape or carve out an amazing six-pack (sorry, that wasn’t very gentle was it).
Of course, you’re not going to do massive damage if you don’t eat such things very often, BUT choosing one of these healthy snack bars instead will kick cravings for sweet things into touch.
The recipe for these six-pack healthy snack bars comes from 100 Healthy Raw Snacks and Treats written by Carolyn Hansen.
She’s a nutrition expert, fitness professional and gym owner AND been a national bodybuilding champion; she knows her stuff and has put together her top 100, so we don’t have to go through the pain of finding out what works and what doesn’t (you’ve got to love her for that!).

Six-Pack Snacks – Healthy Snack Bars

You can decide which, and the various ratios, of nuts (oooh, nuts again!) and seeds to use for your healthy snack bars; I chose:

• 50g golden linseeds (aka flaxseeds)
• 25g unsweetened, dried cocount
• 25g pumpkin seeds
• 35g walnuts
• 50g almonds
• 200g sultanas
• Shake of cinnamon
• Shake of nutmeg
• Splash of lemon juice

(Those quantities make about four cups of seeds and nut mix; the sultanas, two cups – I doubled the quantity to make double the healthy snack bars to cater for the locust-like teenagers in the house).
I put everything into a blender and whizzed it up until it was like a sticky dough, then I pressed it into a dish, sprinkled some coconut on the top and put it in the fridge.
THAT’S all there was to it.
The first batch of healthy snack bars dough was really quite sticky – I’d used more sultanas just to make sure everything stuck together – so decided to have another go, using different nuts and fewer sultanas.

• 80g golden linseeds
• 20g dried, unsweetened coconut
• 50g mixed chopped nuts
• 50g chopped hazelnuts
• 100g sultanas
• Shake of smoked paprika

Next time, I’m going to keep some of everything out of the blender to mix in, whole, at the end – my blender is a bit of a beast and has no concept of ‘coarsely ground, leaving a few bits quite chunky’.
These first healthy snack bars, as I said, were really sticky but they firmed up nicely in the fridge and, because of the nutmeg and cinnamon, tasted like Christmas – this was a bonus and makes them absolutely ideal as a healthy Christmas treat replacement for the usual chocolates.
If you want healthy snack bars that are SERIOUSLY sweet, then this version is definitely for you; they’re dense (without being horribly heavy), a little bit is very filling and, WOW, are they going to nail sweet cravings when they strike 😀
The second batch of six-pack snack healthy snack bars were totally different – they were really nutty, not as sweet and adding the smoked paprika gave them a really different edge.
I’m totally in love with these healthy snack bars; not only do they taste A-MAZ-ING, they are super-quick to make and don’t require any cooking, which means all the nutrients remains intact. There’s no artifical sugar, no added fat, no flour, just 100% raw ingredients which are all GOOD. FOR. YOU!
[styled_image image=”http://sixpackforgirls.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/sixPackSnackBars.jpg” alt=”six pack healthy snack bars” w=”0″ h=”0″ align=”center”]
Now, STOP! Before you rush to the kitchen, skipping with joy, let me finish this bit with a word of caution…
These healthy snack bars are seriously YUM, and just because they have the word ‘healthy’ in their name doesn’t mean you can eat endless quantities of them and not suffer the consequences.
The big clue here is in the title Carolyn chose for her book, ‘100 Healthy Raw Snacks and Treats’; snacks and treats – meaning now and again, in treat size quantities, NOT all day, every day and as much as you like.
The difference between these healthy snack bars and your average Snickers, for example, is what they have in them rather than a vast difference in calories. Your Snickers bar contains all sorts of refined ingredients along with the sort of fat you really don’t want to be eating, ever; these healthy snack bars, on other hand, do not.
These six-pack healthy snack bars have ingredients that can help you burn fat (remember, nuts can help you burn fat), will help keep your skin and hair looking great, and will leave you feeling great, anything but deprived and guilt-free – safe in the knowledge you’ve placated your sweet tooth without compromising your nutrition by resorting to junk food; awesome!
Carolyn has lots of other recipes up her sleeve (99 of them, in fact) and I’ll be telling you about a few of them over the coming weeks – no-bake cheesecake that’s just full of healthy ingredients sound appealing? I’ve got my eye on that one!  Or you can go and discover them for yourself HERE.
If you want numbers and comparisons for your healthy snack bars with a Snickers bar then read on – if you don’t care about that; off you go to the kitchen, have fun and let us know how YOUR six-pack healthy snack bars turn out 😀

The numbers…

Hello number fans! Here’s everything numerical you could wish to know about the six-pack healthy snack bars.
These numbers all work with the assumption that each serving is 30 grams (what IS it with 30 gram serving sizes?!) which was not deliberate on my part – the first batch of healthy snack bars ingredients worked nicely into 12 pieces, and the second into nine.
Healthy Snack Bars – First batch – per 30g serving (about 12 pieces)

• Calories: 138
• Protein: 3.1g
• Carbs: 14.75g
  • sugars: 12g
  • fibre: 2.3g
• Fat: 6.4g
  • saturated: 3g

Healthy Snack Bars – Second batch – per 30g serving (about nine pieces)

• Calories: 164
• Protein: 4.3g
• Carbs: 12.5g
  • sugars: 8.5g
  • fibre: 3.6g
• Fat: 11.4g (seriously!)
  • saturated: 2.3g (phew!)

Comparison: 57g Healthy Snack Bars v 57g Snickers bar

Snickers Bar

• Calories: 271
• Protein: 4.3g
• Carbs: 34.5g
  • sugars: 28.8g
  • fibre: 1.3g
• Fat: 13.6g
  • saturated: 5.2g

Healthy Snack Bars – First batch – per 57 grams

• Calories: 262
• Protein: 5.9g
• Carbs: 28g
  • sugars: 22.8g
  • fibre: 4.4g
• Fat: 12.2g
  • saturated: 5.7g

Healthy Snack Bars – Second batch – per 57 grams

• Calories: 312
• Protein: 8.2g
• Carbs: 23.75g
  • sugars: 16.15g
  • fibre: 6.8g
• Fat: 21.66g
  • saturated: 4.37g

Are you confused? Have you looked at the healthy snack bars v Snickers comparison numbers and wondering if I’ve gone stark raving mad?
Batch two contains MORE calories than a Snickers, AND more fat too! It has double the amount of fat than batch one, also, but less saturated fat? WHAT is going on?!
Take a deep breath and relax, there’s no bad news here.
Tweaking the various ingredients of your healthy snack bars will, obviously, alter the nutritional breakdown; if you want lower sugar content, use fewer sultanas. If you want a lower fat content, simply choose nuts and seeds that are lower in fat than others.
The important things to remember, when you’re looking at those three comparisons, are

• It’s not just the number of calories consumed that’s important – WHERE all those calories, and grams of, are coming from is equally important; not all calories are created nutritonally equal
• The healthy snack bars DO NOT contain: refined sugar, corn syrup, hydrogenated fat, trans fats, artificial flavourings or preservatives – the Snickers bar DOES
• Remember the title of Carolyn’s book – snacks and TREATS! The number of calories you consume is still important, so treat these like a treat – a little bit of what you fancy now and then, without all the junk.