Diet Food Reviews

Pranabar Apricot Pumpkin Bar

By: Laura S | Apr 3, 2009

Stuck at work and starving, I reached for my briefcase, where I keep an array of bars for emergencies just such as this. Digging through my collection (I'm not kidding when I say I keep 5 or more on hand at all times), I found the 75% raw (and gluten free) PranaBar,. According to the website, the Sanskrit/Bengali meaning of PranaBar is, "Energetic Day or Day of Life." They are enzyme active, organic, unprocessed, non-GMO, no added sugar, gluten free, soy free, dairy free, vegan and all natural. Wowza! That was a mouthful.

The flavor I chose was Apricot Pumpkin. The bar was sticky to the touch, making it a difficult on-the-go snack, which is what most people want out of a bar. Moving past that, I took my first bite and found it to be extremely nutty. I know pumpkin is a very subtle flavor, but I couldn't taste it at all, nor could I taste the apricots. Upon closer inspection of the bar, I realized that the apricots probably make up the body of the bar, and then there doesn't seem to be actual pumpkin meat in it but just lots of pumpkin seeds that provide the nutty flavor. The more I ate, the more I liked the bar, and it seemed to get sweeter and sweeter the faster I ate it. This is a good and a bad thing - I don't want to have to shove the entire bar into my mouth in order to get some flavor.

More Reviews on

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• David Pumpkin Seeds
• Pumpkin Seeds

Each Pranabar Apricot Pumpkin Bar (48 grams) provides 190 calories , 11 grams of total fat (17% of the daily value), of which only 1.5 grams are saturated (7% of the DV), and they are cholesterol free along with 1% of the daily value for sodium ( 30 mg). With only 2 grams of dietary fiber, I was a bit disappointed - I expected more since this is a raw bar. There is a whopping 16 grams of sugar, which shocked me considering how bland an un-sugary the bar tasted. Finally, the bar has 5 grams of protein - not a ton, but not a minuscule amount either. The nutrition information was not terrible, but also not the best.

Quite frankly, that's my opinion of the bar as a whole: not great, but not terrible either. They are available at a Pranabar affiliated website at 24 for $40.99 (+ $7.00 shipping). I wouldn't buy these again though, but if one happened into my bag of tricks, I wouldn't turn it down either.

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