NutriPals “Balanced Nutrition” Bars

I’ve decided that I can no longer ignore the ridiculous advertisements peddling sugary concoctions to kids (and adults) under the guise of “health” or “balanced nutrition”. Today’s lucky ducky is the line of bars from PediaSure known as “NutriPals Balanced Nutrition Snacks,” namely because I saw them on TV in the gym yesterday while I was doing my post-workout stretching. Seeing the ad lit a fire in me to do some quick investigation into these products. Under this line, there are two specific bars: one called “Balanced Nutrition Bar” and one called “Balanced Nutrition Fruit Bar”. There is also a line of “Balanced Nutrition Drinks” in this line. I may touch on them some other time.

So let’s start with the list of ingredients, which are directly from the PediaSure website. This is for the Strawberry bar in the “Balanced Nutrition Fruit Bar” line:
NutriPals Fruit Bars
So apparently “Balanced Nutrition” consists of a nice dose of sugar, subpar protein from soy, and lots of things that don’t roll off the tongue. I’ll come back to this in a second.

Here’s one of the advertising claims:

1 serving of real fruit in every bar. 9 times more fruit than a Nutri-grain bar

Way to compare yourself to a real high-quality product there. Now let’s take this claim and look back up at the ingredients list. The first ingredient is “Fruit Paste,” which consists of strawberry, apple, and pear purees and concentrates, then a bit of sugar and corn syrup, along with some red food coloring. Then we have the aforementioned soy protein and a bit of corn syrup, before some more fruit. And let’s not forget the “Yogurt Coating,” the first ingredient of which is “sugar”. Even the “Toasted Oats” have sugar, honey, and brown sugar molasses. Seriously, how many different types of sugar are needed?

Now let’s look at the nutrition information:

Fat: 4.5g
Protein: 5g
Carbohydrates: 26g (12g of sugar)

Does that look balanced to anyone other than the marketing executives at PediaSure? This product has more than twice as much sugar as it has protein and nearly 3 times as much sugar as fat. It’s balanced if what you want is to have kids running amok on a sugar buzz and set them up for insulin resistance and obesity.

Even worse is that this garbage is over $1 per bar. How many servings of fruit can you give your kid for that same $1? Oh, but wait, they’re:

low-fat, healthy snacks with a delicious taste kids love, and they contain no high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, trans fat or preservatives.

Kudos on the lack of trans fats. And technically, they do contain no HFCS. But for Pete’s sake, they contain tons of regular corn syrup and sugar! As far as I recall, real strawberries, apples, oranges, and bananas also contain no HFCS, trans fats, or preservatives.

The verdict: Save the money and spend it on high-quality fruits and vegetables. If kids’ tongues aren’t taught to expect the highly processed, super sweet junk from “the baby and toddler aisle,” I have a feeling they’ll think strawberries are plenty succulent.

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