Perfect Bar Protein Bars Review

These bars sure sound arrogant, don’t they? They call themselves perfect and here is why; according to them, they include ingredients that are so fresh, you have to keep them in the fridge.

The story for this protein bar begins with the father of a large family. He created the recipe with a quick whipping up of ground dried fruits and vegetables with peanut butter and honey and declared it perfect. Now his legacy lives on through his kids. He has passed but they still sell his “perfect bars”.

Let’s look closer at the ingredients, nutrition, price, and taste of these bars and see if their name is deserved.

Ingredient profile

To begin, the original Perfect Bar seems pretty basic with peanut butter, honey, and nonfat dry milk, dried egg powder, and rice protein all organic. Then they add in the oils, five to be exact, and a crazy nutritional dried whole foods powder mixture.

Their protein comes from the nuts, either peanuts or almonds and the organic rice protein. Choosing rice protein makes these bars a good choice for vegetarians and it also rules out any allergies that some have to milk and eggs. It is also gluten-free but rice protein is slower to digest than all other choices of protein. But, with a mixture of protein sources, this doesn’t seem to be too significant to the overall availability of protein from this bar.

Almonds are one of the main ingredients in about half of their bars. Almonds are a great choice in a protein bar because they are high in nutrients but relatively low in calories.

They have a high antioxidant content, among which is Vitamin C. Almonds have so much vitamin C that just an ounce of almonds delivers 37% of the daily recommended dosage. These delicious nuts are also high in fiber and protein with healthy fats. This makes for a great weight loss aid because it helps keep you full and satisfied for a longer period of time.

Almonds are also a great source of magnesium. Magnesium is proven to help reduce blood pressure in this study.

One of the five oils included in their recipe is flax seed oil. Flaxseed oil is like a vegetarian version of fish oil. It delivers amazing health benefits from the high omega 3 fatty acid content.

It is great for the digestive system, keeping things nice and lubricated, it allows things to flow freely through the intestines and colon. It also helps with skin problems like eczema by increasing the elasticity in the skin and health. Also, omega 3’s have been proven to reduce inflammation, a symptom that causes many health problems.

In all of their non-vegan bars, the Perfect Bars are sweetened with honey. Honey comes with its own list of benefits. Even though honey is a sugar that contains no protein or fiber it does contain antioxidants because it is made from the nectar of plants. Honey has a mixture of flavonoids and organic plant compounds that give it its super antioxidant power. Read all about that here.

Honey has other healing powers, like the power to heal wounds or burns. This method has been used since the days of Ancient Egypt. It has been proven to help heal infected wounds or burns, diabetic foot ulcers, and other skin conditions.

Some of the flavors use coconut to add a unique taste. Although this food is full of fat and sugar, it can also help to increase the nutritional value of some foods because of the vitamins and minerals it provides.

Coconut provides a small dose of protein and fiber with each serving but its value is really in the content of iron and zinc that coconut has. One serving of coconut can fill about ¼ of the daily dose of iron and zinc for men and about 1/8^th of women’s.

The Perfect Bar contains no preservatives, fillers, or unnecessary ingredients. Most of their bars are certified organic, kosher, and GMO-free. Their amazing blend of superfoods makes their bars like eating a vitamin pill, which we will get into in the next section.

Nutritional value

Due to the amount of added superfoods, these bars have an incredibly diverse and impressive nutritional content. Each bar has a unique nutrition profile. Although the basis of most of the bars is the same, this company doesn’t use a cookie cutter recipe and add one ingredient to make a different flavor.

Aside from the 20 superfoods, these bars can contain many different ingredients. Some contain almonds and other peanuts. Some contain crisp rice cereal and others contain seeds. This company isn’t about delivering a generic bar with a different flavor profile. They create good tasting bars that still adhere to their nutritional guidelines.

First and foremost, we will look at the protein. Each bar delivers between 8-17 grams of protein. Most flavors have 12 or more grams. Since peanuts have more protein than almonds, the peanut flavors are better choices if you want a higher protein count.

The calorie count in their bars varies as well. The original peanut butter bar contains 330 calories, while their lite bars, almond acai, and cranberry crunch, have only 220 calories. All their bars are higher in fat, with more than 12 grams of fat each, some reaching as high as 30 grams. Again, this is due to the five oils they added for health benefits. None of these fats are trans fats, the nasty kind.

These bars don’t have much fiber, around 3 grams per bar. They have relatively higher sugar due to the honey, 18 grams to be exact.

Here is the fun part; these bars contain over 14 vitamins and minerals to help boost your health. For just a taste of what these include, they provide 25% of your daily phosphorus and magnesium needs, 20% of your vitamin E and riboflavin, and 15% of your calcium, copper, and vitamin B6.

Taste and texture

Your first thought might be that you don’t want to try these bars because they’ll taste like vegetables but they do an amazing job at hiding the taste of healthy kale, celery, and seaweed. Here are the twelve flavors they offer:

Peanut butter

This is the original Perfect Bar that Daddy Perfect Bar developed. It has the true unadulterated peanut butter flavor but the texture of fudge. It is delicious and addictive so watch out.

Almond butter

You can’t be fooled by this bar to be anything other than what it says it is. It looks, feels, and tastes like almond butter and has a nice crunch to it with bits of almonds and sesame seeds.

Dark chocolate almond

This new flavor tastes like dark chocolate covered almonds. It basically is chocolate covered almonds, chopped up and pressed into a bar with the strategically added ingredient to improve the nutritional profile. Sounds delicious right?

Dark chocolate peanut butter with sea salt

This has probably been said so many times but this bar is reminiscent of Reese’s peanut butter cup. It has the same flavor profile and it has about the same amount of calories as a pack of Reese’s but is much more satiating, filling and nutritional.

Blueberry cashew

This flavor is the new favorite of many. It is a little sweeter than the others but has a nice texture and a new nut to go nuts over. The dried blueberries are deliciously sweet with a little bit of tang.

Maple almond

This flavor is very similar to the almond butter but tastes like it’s been dipped in maple syrup. If you love pancakes for breakfast, you’ll love this flavor.

Coconut peanut butter

Take the original bar a sprinkle coconut in it and you’ve got yourself a delicious dessert tasting protein bar.

Almond coconut

This is the vegan bar. It uses dates instead of honey for the sweetener and binder. The coconut and date flavor go very well together and the texture is chewier than the others due to the date content.

Almond acai

This flavor is very crumbly and you can’t really taste much of the tangy acai berry as you would expect but it is still very edible and definitely healthy. This bar is one of the bars that the company calls “lite” since there are about 100 fewer calories in this bar than the others, however, there are only 8 grams of protein in this bar as well.

Cranberry crunch

This is another of the lighter, less calorie dense bars available from this company. The peanut butter base is riddled with sweet and flavorful cranberries that are a nice surprise. Where is the crunch, though, in this cranberry crunch bar? Who knows? This bar comes with 9 grams of protein.

Fruit and nut

This is the perfect bar version of peanut butter and jelly flavor. It has the chewy, fudgy peanut butter base with little pieces of dried fruit scattered about. This bar is not lite. It has the full 300+ calories but it also comes with 16 grams of muscle building protein.

Carob chip

This bar is the chocolate version of the original so imagine a chocolate peanut butter fudge bar and you’ve got your carob chip Perfect Bar, a little healthier of course.

Pricing and where to buy Perfect bar

These bars aren’t extremely affordable. A box of 8 bars costs $24. You can buy a couple of pounds of T-bone steaks with that kind of cash but you are paying for the convenience of these bars.

There are many other protein bars that cost just as much and don’t provide all the extra vitamins and minerals so you need to take that into consideration.

Considering you have to keep them refrigerated or they will spoil, some of the convenience is lost but still better than a T-bone, for sure.

Pros and cons

These bars are hard to say anything bad about but I’m going to have to write down something for the cons. Let me see what I can come up with….