Ironman Triathlon Bar: Great taste, not much else
Written: Aug 27 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Tastes pretty good, not too sweet, with good texture
Cons: Expensive, doesn't live up to its "nutrition" label
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| davegingerich's Full Review: Twinlab Ultra Fuel Bar |
Twinlab IRONMAN Triathlon Nutrition Bar - Chocolate Praline
Twin Laboratories calls this a nutrition bar. Is that true? Is it still edible if it is?
Recently, I tried a Chocolate Praline Ironman Triathlon Nutrition bar from Twinlabs and thought I would report my impressions.
Note: I'm placing this review here since it doesn't have its own category yet and I did find one other review of this bar here.
Positives
First of all, this is one of the better tasting snack bars that I've eaten recently. I'm a fan of nutrition bars and frequently eat one for lunch or dinner and nothing else. I've tried Power Bars, Cliff Bars, Tiger's Milk, Kudos, Boulder Bars, Luna bars and several assorted breakfast bars. The Ironman Triathlon bar has some of the best taste and texture of all of them. The Chocolate Praline bar has just a hint of chocolate and no overpowering (artificial) praline flavors either. I like that as sometimes other bars taste as if they added artificial flavor at the last minute and had to go way overboard to cover up an otherwise cardboard taste.
Best of all, these bars are not sickly sweet. But of course, I'm an adult and I don't have the sweet tooth that I once had. A Snickers bar for instance doesn't have much flavor to me except for the taste of sugar, way too much sugar. The Ironman Triathlon bars provide me with a flavor that makes me believe I'm eating something, possibly even something healthy, rather than just a wad of sugar and fat.
The Triathlon Nutrition bar has a smooth inside similar to finely-grained, home-made peanut butter wrapped in a thin layer of chocolate. It is not oily or hard as tar, (try a Power Bar for that). There is no grainy feel, no stale-granola bar crunch. They aren't sticky & gooey like Cliff Bars for instance but they aren't dry, pressed & rolled horse feed either. It's the texture that you would expect from a non-gooey, adult-oriented candy bar. It is quite an agreeable texture and flavor.
Nutritional Facts
Each 2 oz. Ironman Triathlon bar contains 230 calories, 65 of them from fat alone. I find that a bit high but better than the 280 calories (130 from fat alone - see what eating peanuts at the baseball game gives you) found in one Snickers bar. There are 7 grams of total fat in the Triathlon bar and 3 grams of saturated fat, (Snickers; 14 g and 5 g respectively). The Triathlon contains just 2 mg of cholesterol (15% DV), 230 mg of sodium (10% DV) and a small 140 mg of potassium (4% DV). The Snickers bar, even with all of those peanuts, has just 140 mg of sodium.
Twin Labs claims that the Ironman bars contains an approximate ratio of 40 - 30 - 30 of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. For this bar that amounts to 24 g of total carbs, 17 g of protein and 7 g of total fat. There is no fiber in a Triathlon bar, something you get plenty of in many other bars.
Much of the taste difference and preference that I find in these bars comes from only loading the bar with 21 grams of sugars as opposed to the 30 grams stuffed into a Snickers bar.
The Ironman Triathlon bar tries to load up the nutritional checklist by including 50% of the common vitamins and minerals (but no iron). This is a marketing gimmick as these small amounts of vitamins amount to half of what's available in one 4 cent multi-vitamin tablet. If it's vitamins you want, don't buy them in the Ironman Triathlon bar as you're paying way too much for them.
What's In 'Em?
Once you see the list of ingredients, you'll wonder how these bars taste so good. First, there is Special Ironman Protein which consists of soy protein isolate, soybeans, whey protein concentrate and calcium sodium caseinate. There ain't much after that: Just high fructose corn syrup (sweetener), sucrose (more sugar), peanut butter, and one of the worst things you can eat, palm kernel oil, (a highly saturated fat), canola oil (healthier than palm kernel but more expensive), cocoa, nonfat dry milk and the usual lecithin and natural and artificial flavors. There are also a lot of vitamins thrown in but like I said, take a multi- if you want those. I think that is amazingly few ingredients given the price on these bars.
Not So Positives
The nutrition aspect of these bars is more hype than delivery, especially considering the price you pay for them, $1.69 each at my local grocers. The amount of vitamins is low, they include palm kernel oil and I don't think soy beans and corn syrup are worth $1.50 - $2.00.
Conclusion
These bars do taste good and are a tasty snack that I much prefer over a typical, overly sweet candy bar. Soy protein is fairly healthy and so are vitamins but neither are really in short supply in the typical American's diet. The remainder of the ingredients in the Triathlon bar are empty calories, oil and flavoring. One thing that most people in the USA could eat a lot more of, fiber, are entirely missing from these bars. There are virtually no complex carbohydrates in a Triathlon bar. Sugar makes up 87% of the 24 grams of carbos in this bar.
So buy these bars for a tasty snack. One that will fill you with less fat and sugar than many candy bars and which taste better in my opinion. But don't buy them for nutrition, regardless of what it says on the label.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
davegingerich
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Member: Dave Gingerich, ...duhhh...
Location: Colorado
Reviews written: 16
Trusted by: 10 members
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