11 Unhealthiest Protein Bars

The advent of the high-protein movement gave a turbo boost to the protein bar market. Old-school fitness folks may remember the days when only Power Bar and Tiger's Milk offered energizing meal-replacement options and protein-forward snacks for active humans in need of a nutritious boost. Now, good luck heading down the bar aisle at the grocery store or supplement shop without being overwhelmed by all the options lining the shelves. There's practically a bar for every taste to help you keep your macros in check while on the go, thanks to an industry capitalizing on fast fitness and even faster American lifestyles.

It seems unlikely that a health food concept like protein bars would have a darker underbelly — dark chocolate coating notwithstanding. But there is such a thing as an unhealthy protein bar, and their numbers are quite large, both in variety and in the concentration of less-nutritious ingredients utilized. These usually come in the form of highly processed, sugar-sweetened formulations that use saturated fat in fillings and coatings, reducing the overall nutritional value of the bar despite the high protein content. Most of these bars come at a premium price, which means you could easily be spending your hard-earned fitness money on products that aren't helping you hit your personal best. We did the heavy lifting to figure out which protein-packed bars are the unhealthiest and what makes them less than optimal, and we'll go into more detail about our selection process at the end. 

MET-Rx Big 100 Vanilla Caramel Churro isn't just named for a delicious dessert; it has the nutritional profile of one, too. The powerful 30 grams of blended protein called out on the front of the label is mighty seductive to a gym rat, but a deeper dive into the nutritional facts reveals a less thrilling profile. The super-high 380 calories derive in part from the 22 grams of sugar, 20 of which are added sugars. The label may say this is 40% of your daily value, but the American Heart Association says this is closer to a full day's worth of sugar. You'll also find 460 milligrams of sodium, which is great for electrolyte replenishment, provided you've used enough to need a top-up. If not, you're just chowing down on extra salt.

Clearly, this bar is for high-energy expenders like powerlifters, die-hard athletes, and cross-fitters who blow through an enormous number of calories with each workout. Unless you're one of them — and even if you are — skip this sugary supplement, leave the dessert-style bar in the dust, and find a more balanced protein source. 

Anytime you can work a childhood favorite like a PB&J sandwich into your workout program, life gets better, even if it's only a protein bar that recreates the flavors in some fashion. But when that favorite is FITCRUNCH Peanut Butter and Jelly protein bars, the situation gets a little sticky — and not just from the peanut butter in the recipe. Bodybuilder and celebrity chef Robert Irvine provides the brains and the brawn behind FITCRUNCH, a gourmet take on what a protein bar can be. Gourmet is synonymous with luxury, though, and the nutrient info on a PB&J bar demonstrates how indulgent this supplement can be.

This is another super-high calorie bar, plunking down a brain-busting 400 calories with 13 grams of saturated fat, enough to soak up 65% of your daily allotment. In addition to the whey protein blend, the ingredients also include bovine gelatin, palm kernel oil, and maltitol, a plant-based sweetener that can cause a laxative effect in some people. Reading labels like this one clues you in on how highly processed protein bars can be. Even using beet and grape extracts as natural food dyes can't redeem the other unhealthy aspects of this bar.

Nature Valley may be a snack producer par excellence, but when it slaps extra protein in the formula and comes up with a bar like its Peanut Almond Dark Chocolate option, it comes precariously close to overlapping with the more dedicated protein bar section of the grocery store. Unsuspecting shoppers could easily be swayed by the call-out of 10 grams of protein in each bar stamped above a luscious-looking slab of seeds and nuts resting on a bed of chewy chocolate.

If you're looking for a snack that's more advisable than a handful of Oreos, you may find what you're looking for here. But if you're looking for actual nutrition, the 12 grams of fat (4 grams saturated, or 19% of your whole day's portion) versus the 10 grams of protein will throw you for a curve. The 5 grams of added sugar are sure to cause a little sticker shock, too, considering they come from corn syrup — yes, corn syrup, the kind used to make candy bars and soft drinks. That little disclosure should be enough to convince you that this is one unhealthy protein bar.

Nothing like a misnomer in a product title to lead you to believe it's better for you than it actually is. Such is the case with Perfect Bar Dark Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter protein bar. It proudly announces itself to be "the original refrigerated protein bar," thanks to the lack of shelf-stabilizing preservatives in the formula. That's a major win for active eaters looking to shed the legacy of strange chemicals and excessive processing in their diet. And reading the back of the package is like perusing a recipe for a super-green smoothie. How could this bar go so far off the mark with such a promising foundation?

Maybe it happened with the calories, a considerable 330 per bar, likely due to the high-fat content from the peanut butter. It could also be the 4 grams of saturated fat, which is 20% of the ideal daily dose. Or it could be the 12 grams of added sugar, which may come from the honey and chocolate, but still, it's added sugar, and 24% of what's advised to have each day, at that. And the 20 grams of fat poised against the 15 grams of protein won't help matters, either. Taken all together, this so-called perfect bar is a perfect one to omit from your gym bag.

Heavy lifters trying to keep up with their enormous protein needs may think they have a flavorful friend in Anabar S'mores protein bars. But this offering from GNC is a repackaging of too many undesirable ingredients wrapped around the protein as a way to make the medicine go down smoothly, if not healthfully. The company crows about not including sugar alcohols right on the package, which may draw the eye of anyone sensitive to these tricky sweeteners.

That may be the only thing Anabar has to be proud of with this bar, considering what actually is used to sweeten this nostalgia-flavored meal replacement bar. It's sugar ... so much sugar — in the peanut butter, plus molasses and honey, then a little more sugar in the milk chocolate coating. Also, there's brown rice syrup in the whey crisps, sugar and corn syrup in the marshmallow layer, and a pile-up of sugar, corn syrup, honey, and molasses in the graham crackers. Somewhere along the way, hydrogenated oils jump into the fray, but by then, anyone who reads the label concludes that this is one of the unhealthiest protein bars you can sink your teeth into.

I've eaten many different types of protein bars over the years, weighing the benefits of having high quantities of protein available in a package deal that sometimes forgets it's supposed to be nutritious overall. I've discovered that although substantial protein content is the obvious draw in any protein bar, the amount considered "substantial" varies among bars, as well as consumers. Your ideal protein intake in bar or other form will depend on your nutritional needs, of course, which means the level of protein grams varies from person to person. High-quality protein trumps low-quality protein, obviously, so I checked into the types of protein in the bars on the list to see how they fared.

The drawbacks of the unhealthiest protein bars we found were the usual suspects that derail the best-laid nutritional plans of anyone looking for a relatively clean bar to supplement their meals. Anytime sugar, fat, saturated fat, sodium, or overly processed ingredients insert themselves into the equation, a bar takes a turn for the unhealthy. I identified the bars with the most troubling numbers where those elements were concerned, as well as choosing particularly high-calorie bars, as this can be nutritionally counterproductive even if the bar meets your macronutrient expectations.