Gear Review Greenbelly Bars

Nick

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Aug 9, 2007
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Greenbelly Bars
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My Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
Price: Variable ($4-5), See Kickstarter Campaign or visit their online store.

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There are plenty of meal replacement bars out there, and to be honest, I wouldn't be interested in trying or reviewing the vast majority of them. The unique concept behind Greenbelly bars is that they are full meal replacements but they taste really good and are filled with good, natural ingredients. Instead of being packed full of funky, hard to pronounce stuff, they're just made with normal food without all the preservatives. And to make it a true meal replacement, each bar is 33% or 1/3rd of the FDA recommendations for what your body needs. Check it out:

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At just over 5oz a piece, if someone wanted to run only off these bars and avoid having to cook and, carry a stove, pot, etc. It's actually a pretty reasonable plan and your food weight would be right around one pound per day. Personally, I wouldn't do that. A hot dinner is nice and mixing things up is pretty important when you're on the trail for a long time. But I could totally see this replacing my breakfast and maybe even some of my lunch routine.

I'd tried meal replacement bars in the past that were just horrendous so I was actually really surprised to get these and find out they were not just tolerable to eat but they were actually insanely good! Each bar is split into two inside the package so it makes it easy to have half now and half as you hike or whatever you prefer. My favorites were the two fruit flavors; Cranberry Almond and Peanut Apricot. The Dark Chocolate Banana was good too, but I'm not a big chocolate guy. If I were putting down many of these on a long trip, I'd welcome the variety though.

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What do we love?

The flavor and eatability is top notch. It tasted absolutely nothing like any meal replacement bar I've ever tried and it didn't require a gallon of water to wash down. And with the big chunks of real fruit and nuts, it didn't have that processed brick feel of most regular snack bars you might hike with.

The weight and complete nutrition in one bar is also very appealing. We like that they split each bar in two to make spreading the meal out easier.

No preservatives!

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What would we change?

Price is a little on the high side for the 3-packs but much more reasonable if you buy the larger packages, largely due to shipping costs getting spread out. I feel these are well worth the cost in the $4-$5 range. If you're thinking about pulling the trigger on the Kickstarter, save some money and go for a 12-pack. You won't regret it.

As Greenbelly grows and gets bigger, it would be cool to see them offer a vegan option (without honey), as well as getting their oats from a certified gluten-free source so that they can have that selling point.


Conclusion

I really liked these bars. I wasn't originally going to do a full review, since I just had a 3-pack to go on, but after trying them out, I decided it was well worth it. I'd recommend them to anyone.

Here is the Greenbelly Kickstarter video. Head on over to their Kickstarter page here, or go direct to their website when the campaign is done.

[parsehtml]<iframe width="800" height="600" src="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1169741882/greenbelly-complete-meal-on-the-go/widget/video.html" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"> </iframe>[/parsehtml]
 
Great review. I love supporting growing companies. I'd like to order a few, thanks.
 
i'm going to get some, hopefully they are good...they need to work on their packaging though.
 
I admit, sometimes I am tempted to live off something like this when I am backpacking, and just completely forgot about stoves and meals.

It looks like they are all sold out on their website. I will probably just stick with my homemade granola bars. I load them up with all sorts of good and healthy stuff. I make a huge batch at the start of every summer, and then freeze them and use them for trips throughout the summer.
 
Gag ........ you guys can have mine, never found a 'meal' bar I could eat more than once.

Not really a meal bar, but I do like the HoneyStinger pro bars.....
 
I like to do meal replacement bars once a day when I'm hunting or camping. They are nice when you are either in a hurry or too tired to actually cook something.
 
any info if there is sugar in them? And how much? Are they glutenfree?
I they do not have much sugar and are glutenfree I would try some. They look good.

Can you post a picture of the ingrendients list for me?
 
There are no gluten containing items in them, but the oats they use are not from a certified gluten-free supplier so they aren't marketing them as gluten free (yet). From what I understand that just means there is a risk of cross-contamination with gluten which is an issue for people with stuff like celiac disease and extreme gluten intolerance. I have a mild to moderate gluten sensitivity and these didn't bother me at all.

There isn't any added sugar, Yvonne. EDIT: might be a tiny bit in the second label. Just the stuff that's naturally in the ingredients like the honey, agave and fruit. You can check out all the labels on their website, but here's one:

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Looks like the dried cranberries they used might have had a little sugar added. Probably not much in the grand scheme of things.
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thanks Nick.
Natural Sugar is fine, but no added one. So I might give these a try. They might work as meal replacement for my backpacking trip on the Kalalau trail in July and I do not need to bring a stove. :)
 
haha ........................ for birdseed. Good job though.
 
They look good. I tried something similar last year and liked it. I may order a few for my work trips that will entale a lot of "urban hiking" this spring.

When it gets to desert flavor am I going to swell up like a blueberry?

(Sorry I couldn't resist the Willy Wonka reference)
 
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