Product Review: Designs for Health PaleoBar™

First of all, let's make clear that we do not consider ourselves an authority on Paleo, but then again, nobody is, really. Again, the diet is based on the presumed diet of Paleolithic humans, and unless someone puts a ™ behind the name, people are free to interpret it as they want.
But, there are certain guidelines that paleo falls under, and with these guidelines in mind we looked at the following product: the PaleoBar™ by Designs for Health.

The description goes as follows:

PaleoBars™ are delicious nutrition bars designed to provide a healthy snack food for optimizing the intake of proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and micronutrients. They contain no artificial sweeteners, but include natural ones such as xylitol, maltitol, and erythritol. All PaleoBars™ are Kosher certified and free of gluten, fructose, sucrose, soy protein, and hydrogenated oils.

Ok, sounds good, but honestly, we think the word "natural" is used a bit too freely in this description. Yes, maltitol, eryhritol and xylitol might be coming from natural sources, but so does high fructose corn syrup.

The bars come in 5 flavors, and we got the Chocolate/Almond, Coconut/Almond, Chocolate & Vanilla/Almond. Let's have a look at the ingredients next:

Chocolate

You don't need to be an expert to notice that at least 5 ingredients in the list are not considered paleo, that's why we don't quite understand the product name, that clearly gives the impression that you are dealing with a paleo product.



The macros come out quite well actually, they are well-balanced, which is not as common in "real" paleo bars, where the sugar content is usually very high.
Another surprise is the presence of omega-3 derived from anchovy & sardine. This only goes for the chocolate bar and the vanilla/almond bar by the way.

The taste is quite good as well, but given the amount of sweeteners (maltitol, xylitol & erythritol) this is not a surprise. It pretty much gives the idea of a regular candy bar, although you notice the sugar alcohols a bit more.

All the other flavors basically come out the same, they taste really good, but when you look at the ingredients, there is no way that this could be called paleo. Mind you, we're not too fussy about what's paleo or not, again, we do not consider ourselves an authority on it (but who is, really) but even we draw the line at some point.

Still interested to try? Get them at:

Blue Sky Vitamin
Vita Living