Health bars à la Donna Hay and in general

"Adorned with ornate finishes, delicate trimmings and bright flourishes, these rectangular treats are the image of DECADENCE. And yet, their ingredients tell a far more nourishing story. Deceptively rich, our better-for-you bars are teeming with natural, PLANT-POWERED goodness, forming the ultimate, uplifting treat for the senses."

Donna Hay

The quote at the top and the picture as well are from Donna Hay's last magazine. The capital letters are hers of course.

I have been very remiss of late in writing posts on this blog - a combination of life getting in the way, and lack of inspiration. But I have told myself off about the neglect, and turned to the lavish last issue of the Donna Hay Magazine for inspiration. Opening it at random I came across this beautiful picture, styled once again by the, I now realise, famous Steve Pearce. It was a two-page spread and therefore wouldn't fit in my scanner, so here is a rather truncated looking second page. Imagine it lined up with the picture above.

You certainly would have to agree with Donna Hay in them looking extremely decadent and unhealthy. The section is called 'Wholefood bars', and I confess that in my head I was saying "I bet!"

So I decided to look at one of the examples in more depth - and I chose the Chocolate, raspberry and coconut panna cotta bars as my example. Mostly because, the staggeringly beautiful page at left was the first page that I had opened. You can find the recipe online here. Now it is not a really simple recipe but I have to say that in comparison with many of the health bars on your supermarket shelves, that you may be putting in your children's lunchboxes, they are not really all that unhealthy.

A lot depends on how you view cacao and coconut milk. Are they bad for you? Well cacao is slightly better than cocoa in that it still has the flavonoids, and it's a lot better than chocolate which usually has other fats and sugars added to it. Coconut milk - not sure - another time. There is no sugar in this recipe. Well there is maple syrup, which I shall also treat in a separate post some time - and I gather it is almost as bad as sugar, but not quite. If you use genuine maple syrup that is and not syrup that is maple flavoured. Otherwise the ingredients are pretty Ok - oats, chia seeds, raspberries, dates, almond meal, desiccated coconut, coconut milk and coconut oil (again - I really must do a post on coconut). No actual sugar, butter, or other fat and no chocolate or cocoa powder. So I reckon that they might be OK - as long as you didn't eat them every day. The do look beautiful though.

I cast my eye over the ingredients for her other bars, and they none of them had the real bad things in them. But there was a fair amount of cacao and dark chocolate in some, and all those coconut products, with honey and maple syrup being the main sweeteners.

This, on the other hand, is a selection of the things you will be faced with on the supermarket shelves:

I have often wondered about them. When I was looking after my grandsons last summer I was putting a health bar in their lunch every day - but to be fair the ones they were given were indeed pretty healthy, with no dried fruit and not much sugar. But most of the ones you will find on the shelf are loaded with sugar and fat.

"There are rows upon rows of packaged snack foods in supermarkets, including snack bars made from muesli, cereal, nuts, seeds and fruit. Many of the labels on the packages shout out words such as “natural”, “protein”, “oaty”, “super-food”, “wholegrain”, “light”, “gluten-free” and “97% fat-free!”.

But these words can mask unhealthy products. Many processed snack bars are high in added sugar, refined starch and fat." Rebecca Charlotte Reynolds - Nutritionist UNSW in The Conversation

This quote is from a really good article on the subject of health bars, and how to navigate your way through the choices. She even concludes by saying that a little bit of bad (like Donna Hay's offerings) is OK - if you ban these things completely then you may make the kids want them even more and find other ways of getting them. She does say the best idea is to make your own, and there are plenty of recipes out there - most of them not nearly as complicated as Donna Hay's. Or you could start with Donna Hay. The Pistachio and cranberry raw brownie bars, looked the simplest, and possibly the healthiest too. They're the green ones in the picture at the top.