Review: Trek Bars – Breakfast on the Go

One of my main issues with eating healthily is that I travel quite a bit. I’ve written before about the secret art of Hotel room cooking, and how to make the healthiest choices at hotel breakfast buffets. But for those days when you’re actually travelling at breakfast time, whether that’s on the train, in a car or whatever it’s a little trickier.

If I have an early start I cannot eat breakfast at 5am. My stomach just isn’t awake and I need another couple of hours to stop feeling queasy and kick into gear, meaning I’ve often ended up eating bacon sandwiches or egg McMuffins at motorway service stations (yes, I know I could have the porridge but my will power kicks in even later than my stomach, ok!)

Recently I was sent a box of trek bars from Natural Balance foods to try out. They’re intended as healthy snacks, but as I’m currently trying to lose weight I found them difficult to fit into my daily plan as a “snack” as they come iN over 200 calories each. They were good for eating on a day before going out for a long run, but on most days they were just too high in calories for a snack food when you’re watching calories.

Then one day I had an early start to catch a train into London (ok, the train was at 9am, but I’m self employed and I don’t “do” mornings). I was in a rush and didn’t have time for my usual porridge at home, so I grabbed a bar to stick in my handbag to eat on the train, then I realised I had found the Trek Bars raison d’être in my regular diet plan.

Most “breakfast on the go” solutions are horribly sweet and packed with sugar. I don’t have a particularly sweet tooth and they not only set my teeth on edge but also leave me starving again within 2 hours of eating them. The Trek bars have no artificial ingredients and contain 11g of protein per bar, and 1 of your 5 a day each. This makes them ideal for breakfast, keeping you feeling full and making a good start to the day.

Be warned, they don’t necessarily *look* appealing, but they taste yummy.

They’re basically mashed up fruit mixed with soya cereals. They’re all dairy free, and the Mixed Berry and Cocoa Brownie Flavours are also wheat free. Although they are sweet, because they contain no added sugar in the ingredients they’re not tooth achingly sweet. The bars are deliciously dense and moist, I would suggest if you don’t like dates these aren’t for you, as they feature highly in the ingredients and are what gives it a large amount of it’s texture.

My favourite flavour is the Peanut and Oat, as I love the peanut buttery flavour, but all three flavours in the mixed case were delicious. Now I’ve found their role in my diet plan I’ll certainly be buying another box once my stash has run out!

A mixed box of Trek Bars is £14.99 from Natural Balance Foods