Food guide

Are Granola Bars Healthy? How to Pick the Healthiest Granola Bars

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Short answer

Most granola bars are not as healthy as they look. The oats are real, but the typical bar adds sugar or syrup, oil, an emulsifier and natural flavor, which makes it ultra-processed (NOVA 4). Of the bars we scored, the Larabar Peanut Butter Cookie does best with 44 out of 100 on the Truvi score (our method): three ingredients, no added sugar and not ultra-processed (NOVA 3). Cascadian Farm's No Added Sugar Cinnamon Apple Chewy Bar scores 41, with 5 g of sugar per bar. Nature Valley Crunchy Oats 'n Honey scores 23: 6 g of sugar per bar, all of it added, and 28.6 g of sugar per 100 g.

Are granola bars good for you?

A granola bar is a snack, not a bowl of oatmeal. Rolled oats on their own are a whole food. To hold them together as a bar that keeps for months, most brands add sugar, honey or syrup, oil, a binder such as gum arabic or glycerin, an emulsifier such as soy or sunflower lecithin, and natural flavor.

That recipe is what puts most bars in group 4 of NOVA, the food-processing scale used in nutrition research. The researchers who created it list sweet or savoury packaged snacks among typical ultra-processed foods, and name flavours, emulsifiers, thickeners and ingredients such as soya protein isolate and invert sugar as the markers of group 4 (Monteiro et al., 2019). A bar made only of whole foods with a little salt or sugar added stays in group 3, processed food.

Why it matters: a large umbrella review found convincing evidence linking diets high in ultra-processed food with higher risks of type 2 diabetes and of death from cardiovascular disease (Lane et al., BMJ, 2024). Those studies are observational and look at whole diets, not at one bar a day. But a granola bar is one of the easiest ultra-processed foods to swap, because simpler bars sit on the same shelf.

The granola bars we scored, from best to worst

Each card links to the full page with the label, the ingredients and how the score was worked out.

  • Larabar Peanut Butter Cookie, 44 out of 100. dates, peanuts and sea salt. One 48 g bar has 220 calories, 6 g of protein, 4 g of fiber and 16 g of sugar, none of it added. Processed (NOVA 3), not ultra-processed. It is a fruit and nut bar rather than an oat bar, and its weak spot is the sugar from the dates: 33.3 g per 100 g.
  • Cascadian Farm Organic No Added Sugar Cinnamon Apple Chewy Bar, 41 out of 100. whole grain oats come first, and the sweetness comes from dried dates and apples, with no sugar or syrup on the list. One 34 g bar has about 140 calories, 5 g of sugar, 3 g of protein, 2 g of fiber and 40 mg of sodium. Gum arabic, sunflower lecithin and natural flavor still make it ultra-processed (NOVA 4).
  • Clif Bar Chocolate Chip, 33 out of 100. organic rolled oats first, then brown rice syrup, soy protein isolate, tapioca syrup and cane syrup. One 68 g bar has 250 calories, 10 g of protein, 5 g of fiber and 17 g of sugar, 16 g of it added. Ultra-processed (NOVA 4). It is sold as an energy bar, and it eats like one.
  • Nature Valley Crunchy Oats 'n Honey, 23 out of 100. whole grain oats, then sugar, oil, rice flour, honey and brown sugar syrup, plus soy lecithin and natural flavor. One 21 g bar has 100 calories, 6 g of sugar, all added, 2 g of protein and 1 g of fiber. Ultra-processed (NOVA 4). Each pouch holds two bars, so one pouch is 42 g and 12 g of added sugar.

The bars come in very different sizes, from 21 g to 68 g, so compare sugar per 100 g as well as per bar: 14.4 g for Cascadian Farm, 25 g for Clif, 28.6 g for Nature Valley and 33.3 g for Larabar, where all of it comes from dates.

How to pick the healthiest granola bar

You do not need a brand list. Five checks on the wrapper sort most bars.

  • First ingredient. ingredients are listed by weight. Look for whole grain oats, nuts or fruit first. If sugar, a syrup or "crisps" made from protein isolate and rice flour appear in the first three, the bar is built on them.
  • Count the sweeteners. Nature Valley uses sugar, honey and brown sugar syrup, and Clif uses three syrups. Brands split sugar into several names so none of them heads the list. One sweetener, or none, is the better sign.
  • Added sugars. the FDA Daily Value for added sugars is 50 g, and the FDA calls 5% of a Daily Value or less per serving low and 20% or more high. That makes 2.5 g of added sugar per bar low and 10 g or more high. Clif's 16 g is 32% of the Daily Value in one bar.
  • Ultra-processed markers. natural flavor, soy or sunflower lecithin, gums, glycerin, protein isolates and invert sugar are the signs of a NOVA 4 bar. The shortest labels, like the Larabar, avoid all of them.
  • Fiber and protein. an oat or nut bar should give you a few grams of fiber. The bars here range from 1 g (Nature Valley) to 5 g (Clif) per bar. The fiber Daily Value is 28 g and the protein Daily Value is 50 g.

Low sugar granola bars: what the label really says

Look at added sugar, not only total sugar. The Larabar has the most sugar per 100 g of these four bars, but none of it is added: it comes from whole dates. Nature Valley has less sugar per bar, and all of it is added.

"No added sugar" also does not mean minimally processed. The Cascadian Farm bar has no sugar or syrup on its list and only 5 g of sugar per bar, yet it is still ultra-processed because of the gum arabic, lecithin and natural flavor. The healthiest choice is a bar that is low in added sugar and short on ingredients at the same time.

Why the scores are so far apart

The Truvi score (our method) is an opinion from the label. It blends three parts: how processed the food is, its nutritional quality (worked out the way Nutri-Score, the A to E grade used on packs in Europe, does it) and how easy it is to overeat.

  • Processing. the Larabar, at NOVA 3, gets 56 out of 100 here. Cascadian Farm, Clif and Nature Valley are NOVA 4 and get 30.
  • Nutrition. Cascadian Farm gets 64 and Larabar 48 (both Nutri-Score C on our calculation). Clif gets 35 and Nature Valley 34 (both Nutri-Score D), mainly for sugar.
  • Overeating. researchers who built a numeric definition of hyper-palatable foods used markers such as more than 20% of calories from fat together with more than 20% of calories from sugar (Fazzino et al., 2019). Nature Valley (24% of calories from sugar), Clif (27%) and Larabar (29%) meet that marker. Nature Valley gets 12 out of 100 here, Cascadian Farm 22, Larabar 30 and Clif 34.

So two bars that both start with whole grain oats, Cascadian Farm and Nature Valley, end up 18 points apart, mostly because of the added sugar.

Are granola bars a healthy snack?

A simple bar can be part of a good snack. All four bars here are calorie-dense, at 3.7 to 4.8 calories per gram, and the oat bars are low in protein, so on their own they do not keep you full for long. A bar with nuts or a piece of fruit and some yogurt or milk alongside makes a more filling snack.

The crunchy and chewy bars with several sweeteners are closer to cookies than to oatmeal. When you are standing at the shelf, scanning the barcode with Truvi shows the processing level and a simpler bar from the same aisle.

Questions people ask

Are granola bars healthy?

Most are not. The typical granola bar is ultra-processed (NOVA 4), with sugar or syrup, oil, an emulsifier and natural flavor added to the oats. Diets high in ultra-processed food are linked to higher risks of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular deaths in observational research. The bars we scored range from 23 to 44 out of 100 on the Truvi score (our method).

Are granola bars ultra-processed?

Most are, because they add flavorings, emulsifiers such as lecithin, gums or protein isolates to oats and sugar. Bars made only from whole foods, like the Larabar Peanut Butter Cookie (dates, peanuts, sea salt), are processed (NOVA 3) instead.

Are Nature Valley granola bars a healthy snack?

Not as an everyday snack. Nature Valley Crunchy Oats 'n Honey has 6 g of sugar per bar, all of it added, from three sweeteners, and only 1 g of fiber. It is ultra-processed (NOVA 4) and scores 23 out of 100. A pouch holds two bars, so most people eat 12 g of added sugar.

Are chewy granola bars a healthy snack?

Chewy bars need a binder to stay soft, usually glycerin, gums or syrup, so most are ultra-processed. The Cascadian Farm No Added Sugar Cinnamon Apple Chewy Bar is one of the better ones, with 5 g of sugar and no sugar or syrup on the label, and it scores 41 out of 100.

What are the healthiest granola bars to buy?

Pick a bar with whole oats, nuts or fruit first, one sweetener or none, 2.5 g of added sugar or less, and no flavors, lecithin or protein isolates. Of the bars we scored, the Larabar Peanut Butter Cookie does best with 44 out of 100, followed by Cascadian Farm's No Added Sugar Cinnamon Apple Chewy Bar with 41.

Which granola bar has the most protein?

Of the four bars we scored, the Clif Bar Chocolate Chip has the most, 10 g per 68 g bar, but most of it comes from soy protein isolate, and the bar also has 16 g of added sugar. It scores 33 out of 100.

Sources

  1. Monteiro CA et al. Ultra-processed foods: what they are and how to identify them. Public Health Nutrition, 2019.
  2. Lane MM et al. Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of epidemiological meta-analyses. BMJ, 2024.
  3. Fazzino TL, Rohde K, Sullivan DK. Hyper-palatable foods: development of a quantitative definition and application to the US food system database. Obesity, 2019.
  4. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Daily Value on the Nutrition and Supplement Facts labels.
  5. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The lows and highs of percent Daily Value on the Nutrition Facts label.
  6. USDA FoodData Central API. Nature Valley Oats and Honey Crunchy Granola Bars, FDC 2737862 (label data).

Product scores are the Truvi score (our method, from the label). How the score works. Not medical advice.

Spotted a mistake? Email [email protected] and we will review it.

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